Navy SEAL brand as Political Asset in Minnesota 

The purpose of this analysis is two-fold. First, to determine if a political candidate with Navy SEAL credentials has an advantage in general elections. If such an advantage exists, quantify its empirical value. Second, to determine if this quantified advantage is sufficient to win state-wide elections specifically in Minnesota.

Background

Between 2018 and 2024, seven retired Navy SEALs from various states ran for the U.S. Congress (six for the House and one for the Senate). All were ultimately successful. Notably, in three of these cases, the Republican Navy SEAL "flipped" the seat away from a Democrat incumbent. Full data for the baseline R vs D gap as well as the gap swing are provided for each seat.

In Minnesota, the most recent statewide win for a Republican candidate was in 2006. While Minnesota has consistently produced Democrat wins at the statewide level, its electorate is not intensely Blue. Further, as has been noted by Gallup and others, the United States electorate has been moving "right" since 2016. To establish the most current state-wide gap between Republicans and Democrats, we aggregated total votes across all eight Minnesota congressional districts from 2024.
(Source: report produced by the Clerk of the US House of Representatives entitled "Statistics of Presidential and Congressional Elections 2024")

Across all races, the Republicans generated 1,550,499 votes while the Democrats generated 1,579,742 votes. To the nearest thousand, this is a gap of 29 thousand votes in favor of the Democrats. In terms of percentages, Republicans and Democrats earned 49.53 and 50.47 respectively.

The quantitative summary is that Minnesota is essentially a toss-up with Democrats holding an advantage of less than one percentage point (0.94 ppts).

Key Findings

The overall conclusion of this analysis is that, ceteris paribus, a Navy SEAL Republican candidate should be expected to win by approximately 5.9 percentage points in a statewide Minnesota election. Furthermore, their margin of victory should be expected to improve in subsequent elections.

	Across all seven Navy SEAL initial races, the Navy SEAL candidates generated an average 6.82 percentage point advantage compared to the result from the prior election. Subtracting the 0.94 ppt gap in favor of Democrats statewide, yields the projected Navy SEAL gap of +5.9 ppts in Minnesota.
	The Navy SEAL brand does not just provide advantage in the current election. Between the brand and the personal characteristics it represents, Navy SEAL margins of victory continue to advance even after their initial election. The first two Navy SEALs to run appear to have functioned as "pioneers" in transferring the Navy SEAL brand to politics. Cranston in 2018 and Luttrell in 2020 both ran in election cycles difficult for Republicans. Their margins of victory suffered as a result. However, their performance continued to improve in subsequent elections. Cranston, the original pioneer, has grown his advantage to R+31.4 in 2024 from a previous high-water mark of R+24.6 prior to his election in 2018.
Methodology
This analysis uses a standard pre/post methodology. It compares the margin of victory change between the Republican and Democrat candidates in a given seat between the Navy SEAL’s initial campaign and the margin in the preceding cycle. The difference is determined as the Navy SEAL Advantage. In the cases of Navy SEALs elected in 2018 and 2020, the change in margin of victory was also tracked through each subsequent cycle to determine the longer-term advantage the Navy SEAL brand and associated personal attributes brings to a legislator. The election result data was obtained from Ballotpedia and is attached with relevant calculations.