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Trivia answer
In which state do Democratic presidential candidates have the longest running winning streak?
a. California
b. Hawaii
c. Massachusetts
d. Minnesota
The state with the longest-running winning streak for Democratic presidential candidates is Minnesota, which has backed the Democratic nominee in every presidential election since 1976. Washington, D.C., the only non-state to vote in presidential elections, has voted for the Democratic nominee in every election since 1964, when it first cast a presidential vote.
In five of the 11 presidential elections since 1976 (1980, 1984, 2000, 2004, and 2016), the Democratic candidate's margin of victory in Minnesota was under five percentage points. The best-performing Republican candidate during this time was Ronald Reagan (R), who won 49.54% of the vote to Walter Mondale's (D) 49.72% in his 1984 re-election campaign. Minnesota was Mondale's home state and the only state he carried that year.[1]
Nine states share the longest-running Republican winning streak in presidential elections. Since 1968, every Republican presidential candidate has carried Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
A winning streak is defined as when a single party wins two or more consecutive elections. This means that the six states which backed Barack Obama (D) in 2012 and Donald Trump (R) in 2016 (Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) do not currently have a presidential winning streak. Of the 44 states with streaks, 24 have Republican winning streaks and 20 have Democratic winning streaks. The average Republican winning streak lasts through the past nine elections, while the average Democratic winning streak lasts through the past seven.
