Minnesotans are still hopeful, but less so than 4 years ago
A plywood mural reading, "Hope / What do you hope for / ¿Cuales son tus esperanzas?" The "o" in "hope" is shaped like a heart, and an arrow points toward it, accompanied by the words, "Please, add your thoughts." It's signed by @eror.lab. Photo by Awa Mally for MPR
Minnesotans are still hopeful, but less so than 4 years ago
by CRAIG HELMSTETTER | Aug. 26, 2021
We recently partnered with Minnesota Public Radio News, for a second time, on a wide-ranging survey of Minnesotans. This one, the Minnesota’s Diverse Communities Survey, focuses on racial issues, whereas the earlier 2017 Ground Level Survey of Minnesotans focused on regional differences.
Among the first questions in both surveys was: When you think about Minnesota, are you generally hopeful or fearful about the future?
The results? In 2021, Minnesotans are less overwhelmingly optimistic than we were in 2017, and this is especially true among Black Minnesotans and Republicans.
In 2017, 82% of Minnesotans said they were generally hopeful about Minnesota. Since then, we have lost 11 percentage points: 71% of Minnesotans now say they are hopeful. Perhaps that is not surprising, given the COVID-19 pandemic and lingering anxieties related to George Floyd’s murder.
Still, a drop in hopefulness was not a given. In both 2017 and 2021 the state was emerging from a fractious national election. 2021 is a time of pandemic, but at the time the survey was being conducted—April 26 to June 14—conditions had improved to the point where Governor Walz lifted several restrictions, including a mask mandate, on May 14. Also, on May 25 most Americans (and presumably most Minnesotans) welcomed the jury’s decision to find Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering Floyd as a measure of justice.
The drop in hopefulness between our 2017 and 2021 surveys appears to be especially acute among Black Minnesotans. In 2017, virtually all Black Minnesotans we surveyed, 93%, indicated that they were hopeful. Given the state’s documented racial disparities, many Whites (like me) found this very surprising. During a North Minneapolis “Hawthorn Huddle” discussion facilitated by MPR News along with KMOJ to explore this finding, I learned that hopefulness is an essential part of Black Minnesotans’ culture and survival.
That hopefulness appears to have frayed a bit. Today, 72% of Black Minnesotans indicate they are hopeful. This is still a strong majority, but not the nearly unanimous sentiment that we observed four years ago. The proportion of Black Minnesotans choosing hopefulness over fearfulness has fallen by over 20 percentage points.
Despite this dip, the overall finding from this latest survey is another consensus of hopefulness. As in 2017, when we saw a strong majority of Minnesotans from several regions of the state choosing hopefulness over fearfulness, the same is the case across the spectrum of racial and ethnic groups we were able to measure in the 2021 survey. In fact, when we take into account margins of error associated with this survey data, all the groups are statistically tied, with around seven in 10 feeling hopeful about the state’s future.
“I always have hope for a better future.”
“I had very little fear before, but I have a lot of fear now.”
Beyond the regional emphasis of the 2017 survey and the racial and ethnic emphasis of this year’s survey, we can compare several other characteristics of Minnesotans to see how they relate to hopefulness—and how that may have changed over the past four years. In most cases, the patterns of hopefulness are similar:
Women and men are equally hopeful in 2021 as they were in 2017.
The proportions expressing hopefulness are statistically tied between those who live in Greater Minnesota and those who live in the Twin Cities region. In 2017, the proportion expressing hopefulness was somewhat higher in the Twin Cities than in Greater Minnesota.
In 2021, all age groups (from 18-29 to 65 or older) are similarly hopeful about the state’s future. In 2017, younger Minnesotans and those age 65 or older were more likely to express hopefulness than those age 45-54.
As in 2017, this year’s survey finds that a larger percentage of Democrats are hopeful about Minnesota than is the case among Republicans. The difference between the two party affiliations, however, has grown.
Just under half of Minnesotans who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning now say they are feeling hopeful—a 26 percentage point drop. Perhaps this is also not surprising given President Joe Biden’s election just six months prior to the survey and the other political gains that Democrats had recently made in the state (although Republicans fared well in many parts of the state, including holding on to a majority in the state Senate). But also note that the question was not explicitly political in nature, perhaps signaling a subtle shift in the mindset of some Republicans.
“There is so much hatred that I am afraid of people and places that I never feared before.”
“The accountability we saw happen with Derek Chauvin’s case gave our community hope that maybe, just maybe, things are finally changing.”
Still, despite a drop over the past four years, and even in the midst of a still-not-over global pandemic, Minnesotans of nearly all backgrounds remain overwhelmingly optimistic. There are over twice as many hopeful Minnesotans as there are fearful Minnesotans. Let’s all hope that this generally shared up-beat attitude bodes well for the state’s future as we continue to reckon with our racial and political divisions.
-Craig (On Twitter: @chelmstetter)
Craig Helmstetter, APM Research Lab’s Managing Partner, was born, raised and still resides in Minnesota.