It’s a historical thing that has more to do with the agricultural heritage of ND. Fortunately, this is fading fast. The pioneering families had issues with grain buyers in the early 1900’s and in came the Farmers Union, which was a out in the open socialist if not communist enterprise that organized the farmers. They started the NPL, which merged with the dem party to become the Demorcat-NPL of ND.
The next generation still voted democrat whether they farmed or not.
Now we have fewer farmers due to larger farms, and they are more businessmen than the straw hat types depicted by TV. Oil and other business types employ far more now than the ag industry. The result was getting Hoeven and Cramer elected with Heitkamp barly sneaking in.
Heitkamp is basically supported only by the far fringe left, with most of her campaign money coming in from out of state. She’s an Ed Schultz grade leftist, as she and her brother have been holding Ed’s hand for decades.
This theory described above also applies to Montana and SD.
Maybe some forgetting history is a good thing if the association with banks is a deal killer for voting for sanity.