Minnesota’s voter turnout fell in 2024 from record levels set in 2020, according to a release from Secretary of State Steve Simon’s office.

“Early estimates would indicate a turnout of around 76% for the 2024 elections,” according to the press release. “This exceeds the participation rate of 74.72% in 2016, but remains below the record participation rate of 79.96% in 2020.”

As usual, Minnesota’s turnout rate was much higher in 2024 than the national average, and Minnesota’s decline reflects preliminary estimates of declining national turnout.

But the decline in turnout in Minnesota has not been evenly distributed, according to a report. Reformer analysis of voting results. Turnout fell sharply in Democratic strongholds like the Twin Cities and Rochester. And in many deeply conservative rural areas of the state, turnout actually increased.

For each county, we calculated turnout as the number of votes cast in the presidential race divided by the Census Bureau’s estimates of the voting-age population. The overall geographic distribution is similar to 2020 and previous years: In 2024, turnout was highest in the Twin Cities suburbs and lowest in the western regions of the state.

The highest turnout rates were in Carver and Scott counties in the metro area, which approached 90% participation. As in previous years, the lowest turnout was in northwestern Mahnomen County, where most of the White Earth Reservation is located. The participation rate was less than 60%.

But there have been some notable changes since 2020, as the map on the right shows. In Hennepin County, for example, there were about 35,000 fewer votes cast in 2024, despite an adult population that grew by about 40,000 people. As a result, turnout in the county fell by about 8 percentage points, from 86% in 2020 to 78% in 2024.

A similar dynamic was at work in Ramsey County, which saw a 6 percentage point decline. Suburban Dakota County also declined by that much, as did Olmsted County, home to Rochester and the region. Mayo Clinic.

Arrowhead counties, another traditionally Democratic area, also saw a significant drop in turnout.

In contrast, in many deeply Republican counties in greater Minnesota — particularly in the north-central region — turnout actually increased. The biggest growth was in Lincoln County in the southwest, where turnout increased by 5 percentage points. Republican Donald Trump won the county by a 38-point margin.

In short, the decline in turnout was concentrated in DFL strongholds, suggesting a major partisan enthusiasm gap. Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, won nine of the state’s 87 counties. Together, these counties received about 54,000 fewer votes than in 2020.

But in the state’s remaining 78 counties, all of which supported Trump to varying degrees, about 27,000 more the number of votes cast is higher than in the previous presidential election.