North Dakota

North Dakota had no race for Senate or governor. Its one U.S. House seat stayed Republican: Rep. Julie Fedorchak won a second term by 20.7 points over Trygve Hammer of the Democratic-NPL, in a rematch of 2024, when the Republican margin was 38.9.¹ Donald Trump carried the state by 36.8 points. Republicans won all but one of the seven statewide offices on the ballot, and every statewide incumbent on the ballot won, among them Attorney General Drew Wrigley and Secretary of State Michael Howe.^{1, 2} The exception is not a party office. Levi Bachmeier, whom Gov. Kelly Armstrong had appointed superintendent of public instruction, won election to that nonpartisan post.¹

Set against the 2024 presidential vote, the House race moved 15.7 points toward the Democrats. Hammer drew 76 votes for every 100 Kamala Harris won here, and Fedorchak drew 55 for every 100 of Trump’s. The House vote came to 98% of the 2022 total and 64% of the 2024 presidential vote. InForum reported that less than 40% of eligible North Dakotans voted, the lowest turnout in roughly half a century, and that the state did not follow the Democratic gains elsewhere in the country, with Republicans keeping their hold on statewide politics.³

The Fargo area, which casts 25% of the vote, changed sides, from R+8.4 to D+6.1. The Minot and Bismarck areas moved furthest, 20.0 and 18.5 points, and stayed Republican by 29.2 and 27.4. The Grand Forks area went from R+18.0 to R+1.9. The rest of the state, 45 counties with 39% of the vote, moved least, 14.0 points, and finished at R+36.7.

Of the state’s 53 counties, one changed sides: Cass County, around Fargo. It voted for Trump by 8.4 points and for the Democratic House candidate by 6.1, on 58,506 votes, 25% of the state’s total. Grand Forks County nearly followed: it went from R+18.0 to R+1.9. The widest swing among the larger counties was in Williams County, around Williston, which moved 23.5 points and still voted Republican by 44.0. Only Sioux County moved toward the Republicans. Fargo and Grand Forks are also where Democrats gained legislative seats.⁴

No chamber and no statewide office changed hands. The governor’s office, held by a Republican, was not on the ballot, so Republicans keep full control of state government, and they kept supermajorities in both chambers: 80 of 94 House seats and 41 of 47 Senate seats in the North Dakota Monitor’s count of November 12. MultiState had them at 83 and 42 before the election.^{2, 4, 5} Overriding a veto takes two-thirds of the members elected to each house, a mark Republicans pass with room to spare in both.⁶ The Democratic gains came in Fargo and Grand Forks. Mary Adams defeated Republican Sen. Jeff Barta in District 43, Democrats won House seats in Districts 41 and 43, and Nicole Derenne won a special election for a District 42 House seat. One District 41 seat was decided by 33 votes, and the results are unofficial.^{4, 5} Republicans took one Democratic-held House seat, in Fargo’s District 11.²

House Republicans chose Rep. Robin Weisz as majority leader and nominated Rep. Brandy Pyle for speaker; Senate Republicans re-elected Sen. David Hogue as majority leader. Lawmakers take office December 1.⁵ The Legislative Assembly also divides the state into legislative districts, the governor may veto the bills it passes, and the state’s single U.S. House seat is elected at large, so the election changed nothing in who draws the lines.^{6, 7} The secretary of state, an elected office, stays with Republican Michael Howe, who defeated Ryan Braunberger of the Democratic-NPL.^{1, 6}

A constitutional measure passes in North Dakota with a majority of the votes cast on it, whether the Legislative Assembly proposes it or voters initiate it.^{7, 8} Voters rejected both on the ballot. Measure 1 would have raised that bar to 60 percent for future amendments, and drew 43.5% yes.^{2, 9} Measure 2, an initiated measure, would have required public schools to provide a free breakfast and a free lunch to all students each school day, regardless of income. It fell just short of a majority, with 49.4% yes, in complete but unofficial results.^{2, 9, 10}

Gov. Kelly Armstrong said he does not anticipate a large push by Republican lawmakers to revisit a universal school-meals program. “I just think it’s a little harder politically today than it would have been even six months ago,” he said, the North Dakota Monitor reported. Democratic Rep. LaurieBeth Hager of Fargo said she will bring free school meals back as a bill.¹⁰

Ballotpedia lists two seats on the state Supreme Court on the nonpartisan ballot: Justice Jerod Tufte defeated Ariston Johnson, and Justice Douglas Bahr won a special election.¹¹

Republicans won again in all seven of the partisan seats they held on the statewide ballot. The narrowest was the U.S. House race, at 20.7 points; the next were the two Public Service Commission seats, at 22.6 and 23.6. Fedorchak carried 50 of the 53 counties. Democrats won no statewide office and, by the Monitor’s count, remain below one-fifth of each legislative chamber.⁵

Republican John Hoeven’s Senate seat is next on the ballot, in 2028, in a state that voted R+36.8 for president in 2024 and R+20.7 in this year’s House race. The governorship comes up the same year: the constitution counts four-year terms from 2000 and bars anyone from being elected governor more than twice.^{6, 12} Legislative term limits, which voters approved in 2022, begin to remove incumbents in 2028, and both Republican floor leaders, Hogue and Weisz, reach their chambers’ limit then.^{4, 5}