Democrat Heidi Heitkamp prevails in North Dakota in upset of the night

Who says Democ­rats can no longer win in the prairies of the Midwest?

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s ener­getic, per­son­able, and peo­ple-focused nom­i­nee for U.S. Sen­ate in North Dako­ta, Hei­di Heitkamp, appears to have won a sur­pris­ing vic­to­ry in one of the nation’s most con­ser­v­a­tive states.

Repub­li­cans had thought the Sen­ate seat cur­rent­ly held by Kent Con­rad was theirs for the tak­ing when Con­rad announced he would­n’t run again. But their can­di­date, Rick Berg, is now 2,994 votes behind with 100% of precincts counted.

As of 1:45 AM Pacif­ic Time, the results were as follows:

• Repub­li­can Rick Berg: 49.31% (157,758 votes)
• Demo­c­rat Hei­di Heitkamp: 50.25% (160,752 votes)

On Twit­ter, Heitkamp declared vic­to­ry, tweet­ing, “I am con­fi­dent I am going to be the next Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor from North Dakota.”

Con­grat­u­la­tions flowed in from sup­port­ers, though Heitkam­p’s Repub­li­can oppo­nent Rick Berg had yet to con­cede defeat.

Heitkam­p’s cam­paign received atten­tion from sev­er­al nation­al media out­lets (includ­ing the New York Times) for its heavy empha­sis on retail politics.

It’s evi­dent from the results that Heitkamp worked pret­ty hard to secure votes for her can­di­da­cy. Mitt Rom­ney crushed Barack Oba­ma in North Dako­ta, 58% to 38% — and yet, North Dakotans are send­ing a Demo­c­rat to the Sen­ate who has pledged to work con­struc­tive­ly with the pres­i­dent, rather than adding anoth­er suit to Mitch McConnel­l’s obstruc­tion­ist caucus.

Heitkam­p’s vic­to­ry is an unex­pect­ed hold for the Democ­rats. Our own Pat­ty Mur­ray, who was tasked with chair­ing the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cam­paign Com­mit­tee in 2012, had argued that Democ­rats were poised to do well in 2012 despite hav­ing a dif­fi­cult map to work with. The results have vin­di­cat­ed her strat­e­gy and recruiting.

Mur­ray’s job was made all the hard­er by the retire­ments of Con­rad, Ben Nel­son of Nebras­ka, Herb Kohl of Wis­con­sin, Jim Webb of Vir­ginia, Daniel Aka­ka of Hawaii, and Jeff Binga­man of New Mex­i­co. But Democ­rats appear to have held on to all of those seats, except Nel­son’s, which is pret­ty impressive.