Tiny Democratic lead in southern Minnesota congressional race makes recount likely

Sydney Kashiwagi, Christopher Vondracek and Jp Lawrence, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Nov 4, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — It looks like the 1st District race between Republican incumbent Brad Finstad and Democratic challenger Jake Johnson will go to a recount.

With 99% of the vote counted at 5:30 a.m., Johnson led the race by 321 votes, 163,059 to 162,738.

The last time Democrats held the seat was when Gov. Tim Walz represented the district.

The two candidates running for U.S. representative in District 1 told their supporters that the outcome of the race won’t be finalized until later Wednesday morning.

Regardless of the final tally, Finstad’s chief of staff David FitzSimmons said it was likely that the race was headed to a recount. A publicly funded recount may occur if the difference in the votes cast between the apparent winner and any other candidate falls within 0.25% of the vote.

“This is going to be an extremely close race,” Johnson’s campaign manager Nik Marda said at 11:45 p.m. “We do not expect to have a result called at the end of tonight.”

The race was closely watched in the final weeks of the campaign. Millions of dollars had poured in from both parties and outside groups. The First District contest was the only congressional race in Minnesota that attracted that level of attention from national political groups in the general election.

Independent political forecasters had also shifted their predictions as Election Day neared, based in part on the influx of cash, with Cook Political Report changing its assessment from “likely R” to “lean R.”

The southern Minnesota district has been solidly Republican in recent elections. President Donald Trump won it three times, including by a 12-point margin in 2024, and Finstad beat his Democratic opponent that year by more than 17 percentage points.

Throughout the campaign, Johnson criticized Finstad for his support of several Trump administration policies, including tariffs and the war in Iran, arguing they have pushed up the cost of living and made life especially tough for farmers. He had also hammered Finstad for not holding in-person town halls.

But Finstad had stood by his support for the Trump administration’s actions and told voters that Johnson would raise taxes. Republicans also tried to tie Johnson to the Walz administration’s fraud crisis, a central theme of Republican campaigns throughout Minnesota this year.

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