At the end of November in 2020, Dave Wasserman, Senior Editor at Cook Political Report, stated that Ilhan Omar was the largest underperforming Democratic incumbent in the country, then continued: “In fact, I’m not aware of anywhere near this severe an underperformance for any other House candidate in the county, let alone an incumbent.” He must have notified Business Insider, because they published the story the same day, quoting Omar supporters who tried to explain the finding away. Among the explainers was Omar’s spokesman Jeremy Slevin, who said that she wasn’t trying to win General Election (GE) votes for herself but rather was dedicating her efforts to produce votes for Biden. In the same article, Blois Olson – then a local political communications strategist, and today a local public affairs media advisor – credited Omar for producing the Minneapolis turnout surge and for delivering the grassroots.
For years, DFL leaders have uttered variations on this theme. Here is DFL State Chair Ken Martin in August 2022: “… In 2018, Omar got more votes than any new member of Congress — juicing turnout for Democrats statewide”. Two years later, in July 2024: “I know I can trust [Omar] to turn out DFL voters for our statewide candidates”. When Keith Ellison nominates Omar for DFL endorsement, he says, “When I first was elected in 2006 turnout soared, but Ilhan took it to a whole new level!”
None of this ever was true.
Let’s start with the Ellison claim, that she took turnout to a “whole new level!” It is true that Ilhan Omar first appeared on the CD5 ballot in 2018. It also is true that in 2018, average votes for top-ticket DFL candidates soared in CD5, following a plunge in 2016. But Omar’s ballot appearance and the DFL spike is coincidence, not causality.
- In 2018, in a backlash to Trump, a “Blue Wave” broke over the entire US. Turnout soared, Democrats flipped House seats in multiple states, many with new women candidates. Minnesota contributed two flips, but not from Ilhan Omar: Angie Craig in CD2 and Dean Phillips in CD3 challenged Republican incumbents and won. That same year, Ilhan Omar slid into a safe Democratic seat, open because her predecessor Keith Ellison had decided at the last minute to compete for the newly opened Minnesota Attorney General seat.
- In Minnesota, the DFL wave rose not just in CD5, but across the state. In every Minnesota CD, average number of votes for DFL candidates in the top five races (DFL Candidates Average Vote, or DFL CAV) soared in the 2016-2018 GE pair, after plunging in the 2014-2016 pair (Figure 4a). The four Minnesota CDs that now have DFL House Representatives are indistinguishable in terms of percent change in DFL CAV over time (Figure 4b). If anything, in the years since Ilhan Omar became the CD5 Representative, the percent change in DFL CAV has been the smallest in CD5.
Let us now examine GE success of top-ticket DFL candidates as a function of Ilhan Omar’s popularity. If Omar is the turnout maven that DFL leaders claim, votes for top-ticket DFL candidates should be high in the precincts where she is most popular, and low in the precincts where she is least popular. Figure 3 showed that that the reverse is true when the top-ticket is limited to President. Figure 5 shows what happens when “top-ticket” includes President and four other statewide races. There is no relationship between Omar’s popularity and DFL CAV (Figure 5a), and there is an inverse relationship between Omar’s popularity and number of GE ballots cast (Figure 5b). The pattern first seen in 20162 reappeared in 2020 and 2024: Ilhan Omar is most popular in precincts that vote the least.
It could be argued that “delivering the grassroots” means prompting low-propensity voters to get to the polls. It could be argued that without Omar on the ballot, these low-voting precincts would vote even less, so she juices turnout at the margins, which the DFL needs.
The data show otherwise. If Ilhan Omar were a motivator, then precincts filled with somnolent voters awakened by Ilhan Omar would show turnout leaps in GE18. There is no such leap. Figure 6a shows GE turnout, defined as percentage of voters casting ballots, for 14 years, from 2010 through 2024, for three CD5 communities where Omar is most popular, and three where she is least popular. Figure 6b shows the change from one GE to the next in the number of ballots cast.
- In all six communities, the pattern of change is the same before and after 2018: Turnout increases in Presidential years, and declines in midterm years, a phenomenon that manifests everywhere in the US. There is no leap in 2018.
- From the 2016 Presidential year to the 2018 midterm, turnout declined in all six communities, regardless of Omar’s popularity.
- From the 2018 midterm to the 2020 Presidential year, turnout spiked in all communities, more in Minneapolis than the suburbs. But this larger comparative spike for Minneapolis also appears in the 2016 and 2012 Presidential years, before Ilhan Omar presumably arrived to “deliver the grassroots”.
- The spikes in Presidential years also can be described as plunges in midterm years. If Ilhan Omar is responsible for the 2020 Minneapolis spike, then she also is responsible for the 2022 Minneapolis plunge.
- In every GE, before and after Omar appears on the ballot, the percentage of registered voters who cast ballots is consistently higher in the suburbs that dislike Ilhan Omar, than the Minneapolis wards that love her.
- In 2024, there was a turnout surge in Minneapolis Ward 6, home to large concentrations of Somali Muslims. This did not benefit the DFL. Minneapolis Ward 6 had the largest decline in DFL-over-GOP Presidential vote margin, and the largest increase in Trump’s vote share, in CD5. The increased W6 turnout did, however, benefit Ilhan Omar, where from 2022, her GE performance increased the most. Perhaps Ward 6 voters heeded Omar’s persistent messaging: The Biden administration was facilitating GAZA GENOCIDE. She was the savior. She actively turned out W6 voters not for but against the DFL, while promoting herself.
As for Ken Martin’s remark, that in 2018 she got more votes than any new member of Congress: Of course. As noted above, in 2018, a Blue Wave broke over the entire US in a backlash to Trump. Minnesota long has had among the highest voter participation rates in the country, and in addition to Trump backlash, 2018 was of unique Minnesota interest due to fierce partisan competition for the open Governor and Attorney General (AG) seats. It was of even more unique interest in CD5 because native son Keith Ellison was the DFL nominee for AG. It was an opportunity to earn another identitarian first, by electing the first African American Muslim to a Minnesota statewide office. And yes, there also was Ilhan Omar, the antidote to Trump, ready to slide into the seat that Ellison had vacated.
In 2018, CD5 turned out for Ellison and Walz, and to flick the middle finger to Trump by voting for Ilhan Omar. When Ken Martin declared that Omar got the most votes of any new member of Congress, thus juicing turnout for DFL candidates statewide, he pointed his causal arrow the wrong way. The national, state and CD5 Blue Wave lifted Ilhan Omar, who was in position to be lifted because DFL leaders had placed her there.
In the 2020 GE, Omar under-performed Biden by more than every other Democratic House candidate, and Omar’s Republican competitor, Lacy Johnson, over-performed Trump by more than every other Republican House candidate. Four years later, in 2024, Omar under-performed Harris by more than every other Democratic House incumbent, and her Republican challenger, Dalia al-Aqidi, over-performed Trump by the 6th largest margin among Republicans.
In 2020, Omar’s spokesman dismissed the significance of her comparative under-performance: She wasn’t trying to “pad her numbers” but was using her time to juice turnout for top-ticket DFL candidates. It was a weak argument in 2020, one that Omar herself contradicted when deflecting criticism for continuing to pay her campaign consultant millions of dollars after marrying him: “…our primary and general opponents spent a record-setting $14 million against us — we couldn’t part ways with this team after we got married … ”. By 2024 the already weak argument had disintegrated: Where Omar was most popular, Donald J Trump most improved.
Pt 1: Ilhan Omar and the DFL: Insights from Eight Years of Election Results
Pt 2: Omar’s impact on the 2024 Presidential race in CD5
Pt 3: Ilhan Omar does not produce votes for statewide DFL candidates
Pt 4: lhan Omar portends a DFL vote margin collapse
