2018 United States Senate election in North Dakota


The 2018 United States Senate election in North Dakota took place on November 6, 2018, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of North Dakota, concurrently with other elections to the U.S. Senate, as well as other federal, state and local elections in North Dakota.
Incumbent Democratic-NPL Senator Heidi Heitkamp ran for reelection to a second term. The candidate filing deadline was April 9, 2018, and the primary election was held on June 12, 2018. U.S. Representative Kevin Cramer easily won the Republican primary to challenge Heitkamp, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
On November 6, 2018, Cramer defeated Heitkamp in the general election, becoming the first Republican to hold this seat since 1960. This also marked the first time since 1916 in which North Dakota directly elected Republicans to both of its seats in the United States Senate, giving North Dakota an all GOP congressional delegation for the first time since 1959.

Background

Many observers cited Heitkamp as a vulnerable incumbent Democrat in 2018, as she balanced cooperation with her Democratic colleagues in the U.S. Senate with pleasing her constituents in deeply Republican North Dakota; President Donald Trump won in North Dakota by about 36 points. The race was expected to be extremely competitive and some projected it would be the most expensive race in North Dakota history.

Voter ID law and Native Americans disenfranchisement

On October 9, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld North Dakota's voter ID law, called HB 1369. This law requires voters to use an ID which lists a street address, and doesn't allow PO boxes as valid addresses. However, many Native American reservations don't use a conventional address system and their inhabitants tend to use PO boxes instead, making a large share of the IDs used by Native Americans invalid. Although both Natives and non-Natives are affected, Native Americans are disproportionately more likely to be affected by HB 1369, and the law has been criticized for disenfranchising Native Americans.
The Republican-held state government of North Dakota argued that the law was created to prevent voter fraud, but has been accused of passing the law because Native Americans are likely to vote Democratic. HB 1369 had previously been found to be invalid by the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, for which reason it didn't affect the primary elections earlier in 2018, but the Supreme Court decision meant that many people didn't have the right ID and were ineligible to vote in the general election.

Democratic-NPL primary

The Democratic-NPL Party held their state convention March 16 and 17, during which delegates voted to endorse Heitkamp for re-election. Although general election ballot access is actually controlled by a primary election, challenger Dustin Peyer did not challenge Heitkamp in the June 2018 primary.

Candidates

Declared

Results

Republican primary

Candidates

Declared

Polling

Results

General election

Debates

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Fundraising

Polling


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Results

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