How can Minnesota Democrat (in Minnesota-speak, DFL) Mark Dayton win the governor’s office even when his party loses its majorities in the Legislature? Sure, the Independence Party, which captured almost 12 percent of the vote, is likely one factor. But another factor, which is easy to overlook, is the fact that the rule for counting legislative majorities is not the same as the rule for determining who becomes governor. You might say that that the Republicans won the Legislature through luck–or the design of a state constitution that creates a governing majority where they might not otherwise be one.

The rule for the governor’s office is simple: get more votes than anyone else, statewide, and you’re in.

The rule for legislative majorities is more complex: win more districts than the other party. It doesn’t matter how big your wins are in each of those districts; just win, baby, win.

Different offices, different rules for what counts

Here’s a sports analogy. Ron Republican and Don Democrat play tennis, which consists of “games” and “sets.” Here’s Ron Republican’s score: 6-0, 6-0, 4-6, 4-6, 4-6. From Don Democrat’s perspective, the score is 0-6, 0-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4.

The two men play 42 games. Ron wins 24 of them (57 percent), and Don Wins 18 of them (43 percent). So who wins overall? Don–because he won the most number of sets, 3-2.

Nationally, you find a similar logic in the electoral college. In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore won the popular vote. But George W. Bush won more states. The presidency went to George W. Bush.

For the Legislature, where the votes are placed matters

You might say that Republicans got lucky on the presidential level in 2000. And you might say that Minnesota Republicans got lucky on the legislative level in 2010. Or you could simply say that in both cases they accumulated votes in the way that the relevant constitution establishes for victory.

The website Politics in Minnesota points out that a flip of 700 votes statewide would have meant a Democratic House. That’s 700 votes out of 2 million cast, roughly. But where those 700 votes would come from would make all the difference: They’d have to come in dribs and drabs, in just 6 different districts. In other words, the election was not necessarily a Republican tsunami, if you look at statewide numbers. And if that’s the case, then a Dayton victory at the gubernatorial level is not that surprising. (By the way, the Republican winners in those 6 districts will certainly be vulnerable next time, as their median margin of victory was just 83 votes.)

Minnesota Senate: A Governing Majority, a Popular Vote Tie

Let’s move to the Minnesota Senate. I collected all the vote totals in an Excel file, and found some very interesting numbers.

If you look at all the votes cast for Senate, Republicans got 1,021,654 and the DFL got 1,005,150. Statewide, Republicans won more votes for the state senate. But the difference in the popular vote was a rounding error: 0.12 percent. Not 12 percent, or 1.2 percent, but a little more than one-tenth of one percent. In other words, popular sentiment for Republican senators versus DFL senators was dead even. (The Independence Party made a respectable showing in 8 races, but made no difference in the outcome of 7 of those races, and perhaps not even in the eighth.)

A “dead even” result doesn’t make for a stable governing majority, which is one reason legislative control is determined on a district-by-district basis. The Republicans won 37 seats and the DFL won 30. The legislative advantage went to the Republicans, 55 to 45 percent, even though the popular vote for the two parties was nearly identical. (Thank you, James Madison, for writing the U.S. Constitution, which the Minnesota Constitution emulates. It saves us a lot of trouble.)

As with the House, the specific races where the DFL and the Republicans collected their votes mattered. If 2,392 votes in 4 different districts had flipped, so would have control of the Senate: SD 15 (St. Cloud), SD 25 (Northfield-New Prague-LeSueur), SD 31 (Winona), and SD 40 (Bloomington-Burnsville). The median margin of victory in those districts was just 535 votes.

So how did the DFL win the governor’s office but lose the Legislature? Simple: It’s in where the legislative votes are distributed.