As a Minnesota resident, I've followed state politics here for more than 20 years and this 2:55 summary of the 2004 election campaign is an excellent primer. It delves deep into the geo-political details, noting that Anoka County is Ventura country (nicknamed for the former wrestler-governor) and that the state hasn't elected a Democrat for governor since the 1990s. The reporter also rightly notes that the Democrats here aren't really Democrats; they call themselves DFLers or members of the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party. I think what the Economist is trying to do here is a mini-version of their exhaustive eight-page country surveys that appear in the magazine. And while I find all of this political minutia fascinating, I wonder if people outside our friendly borders will.