Know Your 2024 Electoral College: North Dakota (3 Electoral Votes)
Topic: Elections
NORTH DAKOTA
Basic Election Facts
2024 Electoral Votes: 3
Population (2020 Census): 779,094 (+106,503 since 2010)
Likely Population at 2024 Election: 800,000
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Partisanship
Governor Party: Republican
State House Majority: Republican
State House Majority: Republican
U.S. House Delegation: 1 Republican
U.S. Senate Delegation: 2 Republicans
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Ethnic Demographics (2020 census)
White: 82.9%
Latino: 4.3%
Black: 3.4%
Other: 9.4%
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Presidential History since 1932
Times Republican: 20
Last: Donald Trump, 2020, +33.4%
Times Democrat: 3
Last: Lyndon Johnson, 1964, +16.1%
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Presidential Election Characteristics
·     North Dakota has voted exactly like its neighbor and cousin, South Dakota, in presidential elections since 1920, and the two have been joined with Kansas and Nebraska in that time as well (Kansas and Nebraska have voted for the same candidate since 1912).
·     North Dakota is joined by several other states in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains regions (and Alaska) that last voted for a Democrat presidential nominee in 1964.
·     Nearly one-quarter of the presidential vote (23.8% in 2020 race) comes from Cass County, which contains metro Fargo.  More than half of the statewide vote comes from Cass, Burleigh (Bismarck - state capital), Grand Forks, and Ward (Minot) Counties. The rest of the state is loaded with non-college voters and is also heavily reliant on agriculture and energy production, both core Trump staples.
·     North Dakota is the only state that does not have a formal voter registration system. Voters must provide identification in-person or apply for an absentee ballot with proof of identification.
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2020 Review
Official: Donald Trump +33.4% (120,693 votes in margin)
Keshel Revised Likely: Donald Trump +36.3% (128,412 votes in margin)
While the rest of the country experienced an artificial turnout boom, including neighboring South Dakota, North Dakota had fewer new net votes cast in the 2020 presidential race than it did in the 2016 race. My estimates find an indication of fewer than 8,000 potentially fraudulent ballots, and no counties with a critical indication of election manipulation, which makes North Dakota one of just two states to not contain such a county, and by far the cleanest election in the 2020 presidential race. It is possible, and likely, that limited election manipulation took place given an abundance of mail-in ballots in the 2020 race, slightly clipping Trump’s margins from 2016, but that year also had a very large third party vote share and it is a near-certainty that North Dakota’s lack of a voter registration apparatus made industrial-scale cheating impossible. 49 of 53 counties show absolutely no sign of election manipulation from a statistical perspective, and Biden is still well below Obama’s weakened 2012 vote total.
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2024 Preview
Prediction: Donald Trump >+35% official, >+37% clean
North Dakota, owing to its lack of voter registration database from which phantom ballots flow, is the likely choice for the honor of 2024’s cleanest election by default. Republican presidential candidates have been stuck in Cass County for two consecutive elections since Romney flipped it back from Obama, so if that choke point persists, Cass County may flip; however, the rest of the state is in a headlong rush to the right and likely mirrors South Dakota’s heavily Republican trend evident in their voter registration files.
Trump will gobble up the working-class vote in bigger numbers than he did in 2020, and regardless of what comes out of Cass County, should improve with the Native American vote and potentially challenge Eisenhower’s 1952 margin of victory at 42.6%. North Dakota will be called at the same time South Dakota is, instantly after poll closure.
If you would like to sponsor a precinct map for any of this state’s 53 counties, e-mail mapping@goefi.org.
Previous Installments
Author’s Note: Information is power. This report is free for all to view, and I believe the other Electoral College previews will be, as well. If you find this journal useful and informative, please subscribe as a paying member. My travels and mission this year will not be inexpensive, and your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
I love North Dakota for it great election system and your review showcases this nearly ideal method of counting votes. It needs to be shouted far and wide how it’s VERY possible to go to this method, as it’s the ONLY WAY forward.