The 1996 United States Senate election in Minnesota was held on November 5, 1996. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone

Paul Wellstone

Paul David Wellstone was a two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. Before being elected to the Senate in 1990, he was a professor of political science at Carleton College...

 won re-election to a second term.

DFL

Republican

Major candidates

• Paul Wellstone
  Paul Wellstone
  Paul David Wellstone was a two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. Before being elected to the Senate in 1990, he was a professor of political science at Carleton College...
  
   (Democratic), incumbent U.S. Senator since 1991.
• Dean Barkley
  Dean Barkley
  Dean Malcolm Barkley is a politician who briefly served as a member of the United States Senate from Minnesota following the death of Paul Wellstone...
  
   (Reform), lawyer
• Rudy Boschwitz
  Rudy Boschwitz
  Rudolph Ely "Rudy" Boschwitz is a former Independent-Republican United States Senator from Minnesota. He served in the Senate from December 1978 to January 1991, in the 96th, 97th, 98th, 99th, 100th, and 101st congresses. He was then defeated by Paul Wellstone.-Life and career:Boschwitz was born...
  
   (Republican), former U.S. Senator from Minnesota (1978-1991)

Campaign

Boschwitz filed to run a rematch against Wellstone. The incumbent was an unapologetic liberal. Rudy released ads accusing Wellstone of being "embarrassingly liberal" and calling him "Senator Welfare". Boschwitz accused Wellstone of supporting flag burning, a move that some believe possibly backfired. Like the 1990 election, Wellstone had a massive grassroots

Grassroots democracy

Grassroots democracy is a tendency towards designing political processes where as much decision-making authority as practical is shifted to the organization's lowest geographic level of organization: principle of subsidiarity....

campaign which inspired college students, poor people and minorities to get involved in politics for the very first time. Prior to that accusation, Boschwitz had significantly outspent Wellstone on campaign advertising and the race was closely contested, but Wellstone went on to beat Boschwitz by a nine-point margin in a three way race (Dean Barkley received 7%).

Results