Minnesota saw a historic blue wave, like most of the country, in the 2026 midterm elections. Sen. Amy Klobuchar won the governor’s race, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the US Senate race, Democrats took control of the state House and kept the state Senate, and four US House seats stayed blue.
While the three solid red Minnesota congressional districts—6, 7, and 8—stayed red with all three incumbents winning, the Democratic challengers saw their biggest vote shares in years. And now, the state is waiting with bated breath for the official results for Minnesota’s first congressional district, where a flip from red to blue is brewing for the first time since 2019.
As of this writing, the official results for the race have yet to be announced. Though unofficially, DFL candidate Jake Johnson is in the lead by 323 votes, with 50% of the vote total, leaving Republican incumbent US Rep. Brad Finstad with 49.9% of the vote. AP says over 99% of the votes have been counted so far.
Johnson has already claimed the victory as his own, but because the race is so close, a recount is possible.
The Minnesota Secretary of State’s office states that a publicly funded recount for a state constitutional office can be requested “if the difference in the number of votes cast…is less than 0.25%.” For this race, that would be about 814 votes, which means it falls within that required range.
Finstad’s team told the Star Tribune that the race “was likely headed for a recount,” but did not give any additional details. Johnson’s team told them they are “confident that margin is large enough to survive any potential recount.”
The race is still undecided, but from the voting data so far, we can tell that Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District is looking bluer than it has in years, regardless of the outcome of a possible recount.
The numbers
Minnesota’s southeast 1st Congressional District is made up of 21 counties: Blue Earth, Brown, Cottonwood, Dodge, Faribault, Fillmore, Freeborn, Houston, Jackson, Le Sueur, Martin, Mower, Nicollet, Nobles, Olmsted, Rice, Rock, Steele, Waseca, Watonwan, and Winona counties.
This district includes many of Minnesota’s notable mid-size cities, like Rochester, Mankato, Winona, Austin, Owatonna, Albert Lea, Red Wing, New Ulm, Worthington, and Lake City.
Of these cities, Rochester and Mankato are known as two blue dots on the state’s political map, mostly surrounded by red rural areas. Therefore, their respective counties—Olmsted and Blue Earth—tend to follow suit, while other counties usually stay anywhere from light to deep red.
But this year, NBC News reports that every single county saw a Democratic shift compared to the 2024 presidential election, regardless of whether a majority of the voters there went for Republicans.
This is important, because since Finstad took office in 2022, the district has stayed red. In 2024, Finstad beat his opponent by 17 percentage points, which is a larger margin of victory than President Donald Trump’s margin over former Vice President Kamala Harris.
In this election, Olmsted and Blue Earth were the most blue–as predicted–and Mower, Nicollet, and Winona counties joined them. The remaining 16 counties went red, but the Democratic shifts were still apparent. Jackson, Martin, and Rock, the three most red counties, saw respective Democratic shifts ranging from six to seven percentage points. The rest of the red counties shifted anywhere from about nine percentage points to more than 18, unofficial results show.
This is a kind of blue wave the district hasn’t seen since 2007, when current Gov. Tim Walz became the representative of the district in Congress, a position he kept until 2019, when he opted to run for governor.
Read more about Minnesota’s 2026 election results here.
