How did turnout rates among Somali-American voters compare across key states in 2024?
Executive summary
Somali-American voter turnout in 2024 was highest and best-documented in Minnesota, where a historically engaged community continued to participate robustly but showed notable shifts in partisan preference; outside Minnesota, data are fragmentary—national surveys and exit polls suggest strong engagement among Muslim and Somali voters but do not provide reliable, state-by-state turnout rates for comparison [1] [2] [3] [4]. Reporting from multiple outlets documents changing vote choice within Somali communities (more openness to Republicans on economic and social issues) but does not supply standardized turnout metrics across key states to make precise cross-state comparisons [5] [6] [7].
1. Minnesota: the clearest picture, high engagement with changing preferences
Minnesota’s Somali community has long been underscored as unusually high-turnout — past reporting cited turnout “often as high as 90 percent” in some cycles — and 2024 mobilization included town halls and active outreach in Minneapolis ahead of Election Day [1] [8]; state election data examined by MPR News show precincts with concentrations of East African and Somali voters delivered weaker-than-city-average support for the Democratic ticket in parts of Minneapolis, signaling that while turnout remained substantial the partisan calculus shifted [7]. Local research and surveys from Bayan Research Center and Sahan Journal indicate sustained engagement — a majority still backed Democrats nationally in surveys, but a significant minority (about 23% in one Bayan survey) said they planned to vote for Trump, underscoring that high turnout did not translate into monolithic party support [4] [2].
2. National and Muslim-focused exit polling: turnout headline without geographic granularity
National-level Muslim exit polling and research documented strong participation by Muslim voters in 2024 and highlighted declines in support for the Democratic presidential ticket among Muslim respondents, but these instruments are not calibrated to deliver precise Somali-American turnout rates by state; CAIR’s exit poll, for example, reports shifts in candidate support and high participation by American Muslim voters in states like Michigan but does not disaggregate certified turnout percentages for Somali Americans across multiple states [3]. Similarly, broader analyses of 2024 turnout show increases or stability in handfuls of battleground states overall, yet they do not break out turnout for ethnic subgroups such as Somali Americans [9] [10].
3. Why cross-state comparisons are limited: data gaps and differing methods
Reliable comparison requires consistent denominators (registered or eligible Somali-American voters) and certified vote counts by racial/ethnic subgroup, data that are typically unavailable; available sources include community surveys (Bayan), journalistic precinct analysis (MPR News), national exit polls (CAIR), and academic turnout summaries (UF Election Lab), none of which together produce a validated, state-by-state Somali turnout table for 2024 [2] [7] [3] [10]. Where community polling and reporting exist they indicate strong civic engagement and local mobilization infrastructure, especially in Minnesota, but they are sampling- and locale-limited and cannot be extrapolated confidently to produce cross-state turnout rankings [1] [2].
4. What the available evidence says about variation in behavior, if not exact turnout
Despite the absence of standardized subgroup turnout metrics, consistent reporting points to two patterns: first, Minnesota remained the focal point for Somali voting power and sustained mobilization in 2024 [1] [8]; second, an observable shift in candidate preference among portions of Somali communities—driven by economic concerns and social issues like school curricula—meant that high participation did not uniformly benefit Democrats and in some precincts reduced support for the Democratic ticket relative to city averages [5] [7]. National surveys by Bayan and reporting by Sahan Journal corroborate that roughly one-quarter of Somali respondents nationally indicated support for Trump in 2024 while a majority still favored the Democratic ticket in that survey, a mix that complicates assumptions about turnout translating directly into one-party advantage [4] [5].
5. Bottom line and what remains to be verified
The bottom line: Minnesota offers the clearest evidence of high Somali-American turnout and important partisan shifts in 2024, but there are insufficient comparable, state-level turnout statistics for Somali Americans in other key states to produce a rigorous cross-state ranking; national Muslim exit polls and community surveys confirm strong engagement and evolving preferences but cannot substitute for subgroup-certified turnout figures [1] [3] [2]. Further verification would require either disaggregated state election agency reporting or validated post‑election survey samples specifically designed to measure Somali-American turnout across multiple states — data that the cited reporting does not provide [10].