From Fox News: The Minneapolis mayor’s race will advance to ranked choice voting after none of the candidates received at least 50% of the vote in Tuesday’s election, The Associated Press has reported.
Minneapolis allows voters to rank up to three candidates in its municipal races. The field for mayor included more than a dozen candidates. As of 10:41 p.m. EST Tuesday, Jacob Frey and Omar Fateh had received the most first-choice results.
Fateh made waves on the national political stage this year, drawing comparisons to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York City after The Minnesota Star Tribune dubbed him the “Mamdani of Minneapolis.”
The 35-year-old son of Somali immigrants who became the first Somali-American elected to the Minnesota state Senate in 2020 challenged incumbent Frey head-on this year, criticizing the comparatively moderate Democrat for failing to “meet the needs of our changing society.”
The mayoral election Tuesday night was held between incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey and 14 other candidates.
With 95% of the votes counted Tuesday night, Frey was ahead with 41.7% of the vote, while Fateh came in second with 31.6% of the vote.
Fox9 in Minneapolis explained: Due to ranked choice voting, official results will not be called by the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office until a second, or potentially third, round of vote tabulations can be completed.
Fox News explained the voter calculation process as follows:
In Minneapolis, if a candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes, that candidate wins outright.
But if no one gets a majority, counting moves to additional rounds. After each round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and those ballots are redistributed to the next-ranked candidate on each voter’s ballot. The process continues until one candidate has a majority and can be declared the winner.
🚨ELECTION ALERT: Minneapolis mayoral race heads to ranked-choice voting as neither Omar Fateh nor incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey cleared 50% in Round 1. pic.twitter.com/rajFGUa7ko
— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) November 5, 2025
Many people in Minneapolis appear to have voted for Frey just to keep Fateh from winning.
X user M. Amsterdam, a journalist, announced earlier on Tuesday, “Hard to believe I enthusiastically walked to my polling place to vote for Jacob Frey, the jean-short-wearing mayor who pretended to cry in front of George Floyd’s casket. But, hey, anything to stop #OmarFateh from winning. #Minneapolis Moderates & pragmatic people will vote Frey.”
Hard to believe I enthusiastically walked to my polling place to vote for Jacob Frey, the jean-short-wearing mayor who pretended to cry in front of George Floyd’s casket. But, hey, anything to stop #OmarFateh from winning. #Minneapolis
Moderates & pragmatic people will vote Frey pic.twitter.com/xa7WmH7AZL— M. Amsterdam (@emmdee22) November 4, 2025
Days before the election, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis joked about Minneapolis residents likely moving to Florida if Fateh wins.
He commented on a viral video of Fateh waving a Somali flag and wrote, “Minneapolis has gone downhill, especially since the BLM riots of 2020. The city has lost population, and the election of a mayor who prioritizes a foreign country over our own will only accelerate the decline. Is it too early to name this guy the realtor of the year for Naples?”
Minneapolis has gone downhill, especially since the BLM riots of 2020.
The city has lost population, and the election of a mayor who prioritizes a foreign country over our own will only accelerate the decline.
Is it too early to name this guy the realtor of the year for Naples? https://t.co/SFSaVKjH68
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) October 30, 2025
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