The Will of the Voter

[Freak Out]

Democratic - Farmer - Labor? Is that a midwest thing or a Minn thing?

DFL is a Minn thing only. I don't recall the origins of it, someone else can look it up.

They were part of my dissertation, so I will go ahead
Minnesota, like a number of Midwestern states, had some strong third parties--usually populist or liberal ones--because the Democrats in those states tended to be very weak and very conservative. Wisconsin had a Progressive Party that was very powerful during the 1930s and well to the left of the Democrats. Similarly, Minnesota had a strong left-leaning party called the Farmer-Labor Party that was the chief opposition to the Republicans because their Democrats were very weak. Around the end of World War II, Hubert Humphrey, then the mayor of Minneapolis, helped engineer a merger of the Farmer-Labor Party and the Democrats (and controversially purging the new party of Communists who had been in the FL) to form the new Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, or DFL. The party still has "loyalty to trade union principles" in its bylaws.

Thanks Badger Maine.