WASHINGTON — Rep. Ilhan Omar won the Democratic primary in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District on Tuesday, defeating former Minneapolis City Councilman Don Samuels in a rematch of the party’s 2022 primary. Omar improved her 2022 margins in the district’s two largest counties, according to an Associated Press analysis of voting results at the time she was declared the winner.
Below you can see how the AP determined the winner:
CANDIDATES: Omar, Samuels, Abena McKenzie, Nate Schluter
WINNER: Omar
CALLED AT: 10:40 PM ET
VOTING MEETING CLOSING TIME: 9:00 PM ET
ABOUT THE RACE: The Democratic primary in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District is the third race in as many months in which a member of the progressive U.S. House “squad” has been challenged by a more centrist liberal. A week after Prosecutor Wesley Bell Defeated Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, the second Squad member to their primary losses this year, Omar stood for a revenge against Samuels. Samuels lost the 2022 Democratic primary to Omar by about 2,000 votes. In that race, as in this one, Samuels criticized Omar for divisive comments about Israel or remarks that invoked anti-Semitic tropes. But unlike Bush and New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, whose opponents benefited from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee super PAC spending on their behalf, Omar had a spending advantage in her race. She spent $6.2 million ahead of Primary Day, nearly $5 million more than Samuels. In 2022, she spent $2.3 million ahead of the primary, compared to $1.4 million for Samuels. The 5th District is centered on Minneapolis and includes some of the western suburbs. It does not include St. Paul. Nearly 90% of the district’s residents live in Hennepin County, with 8% in Anoka County and the remainder — usually just a few hundred votes — coming from Ramsey County.
WHY AP CALLED THE RACE: Omar was first elected in 2018 to succeed retiring Rep. Keith Ellison. Her narrow primary victory against Samuels came two years ago, when she lost the two smallest counties in the district but won the third — Hennepin — by enough to make up for her losses in Ramsey and Anoka. Omar won Hennepin County that year with 50.7% to Samuels’ 48%.
Samuels’ path to victory was to win both Ramsey and Anoka, and to come much closer in Hennepin than she had two years ago. But on Tuesday, Omar held a slim lead in Anoka County when Hennepin’s results were released — and they gave her a lead of more than 13 percentage points. Ramsey had not yet reported results, but the county reported only 389 total votes cast in the 2022 primary — not nearly enough for Samuels to catch up.
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Associated Press editor Robert Yoon in Washington contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.