MN:Political trends give the Pubs a large geographic advantage in redistricting

[Torie]

One way I relax is to draw maps.  This is the “relaxation map” I drew today for Minnesota CD’s based on 2020 census estimates, following the Muon2 rules. Despite making some effort to reduce the skew (in particular trying at the margins to load up MN-03 with Dems), it was to no avail.  A zero skew map would be 3-3-1.  This map is 4-2-1, giving the Pubs an extra seat.  The population trends do allow for a clean map, with no extra macro chops, no pack or cover penalties for the Twin Cities metro area, and chops just for Wright, Ramsey, Anoka, in addition to the mandatory chop of Hennepin, and a quite non erose map with "artistic" merit. The Trump trends have exacerbated the Pub geographic advantage in Minnesota. The Dems are pretty well packed into the inner municipalities of the Twin Cities metro area.

The map shows the CD PVI's and the population deviations from the equal population quota.  

I might add that this is why absent a "blue wave" that I anticipate at the moment, despite the Dems probably being able to carry the House races by about 6-8 points nationally, the Dems will more likely than not break even in the House, or win it by no more than 10 seats. Well to be more precise, in my opinion, the Pub skew nationally is about two thirds due to geographic advantage, and one third due to the net gain Pubs get from gerrymandered maps overall (some in favor of the Dems, but more of course in favor of the Pubs).

[Wisconsin SC Race 2019]

Yep, that's what the Dems get for ignoring the rurals for so long.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yep, that's what the Dems get for ignoring the rurals for so long.

Tbh yeah. There's no excuse for Dems not being able to carry the 1st and 7th in this map.

[Zaybay]

This map relies on the state keeping a PVI of D+1, which is unlikely. The state has swung hard back against Trump/Republicans, and the twin cities are the only growing area. It would be better to use 2012 numbers for the state, which show a better picture.

[Wisconsin SC Race 2019]

This map relies on the state keeping a PVI of D+1, which is unlikely. The state has swung hard back against Trump/Republicans, and the twin cities are the only growing area. It would be better to use 2012 numbers for the state, which show a better picture.

The only swinging back in this state is limited in the Twin Cities Metro (read: packing dooming Dems again).

[Brittain33]

This map relies on the state keeping a PVI of D+1, which is unlikely. The state has swung hard back against Trump/Republicans, and the twin cities are the only growing area. It would be better to use 2012 numbers for the state, which show a better picture.

The only swinging back in this state is limited in the Twin Cities Metro (read: packing dooming Dems again).

What evidence do you have for this from Minnesota? In Wisconsin and Iowa, we've seen rural areas that swung big to Trump swinging back to the Dems.

[Zaybay]

This map relies on the state keeping a PVI of D+1, which is unlikely. The state has swung hard back against Trump/Republicans, and the twin cities are the only growing area. It would be better to use 2012 numbers for the state, which show a better picture.

The only swinging back in this state is limited in the Twin Cities Metro (read: packing dooming Dems again).

What evidence do you have for this from Minnesota? In Wisconsin and Iowa, we've seen rural areas that swung big to Trump swinging back to the Dems.

he doesnt, but even if he were correct, it would still be good for Dems, as the Twin Metros are the only area of the state actually growing.
Anyway, as I said before, using 2016 numbers gives the Rs an advantage, but using 2012 numbers actually gives the Dems a large advantage. And, as we have seen over the course of this cycle, 2012 is proving to be closer to the trend.

[pops]

All I know is RIP Angie Craig 2022 if this is the map

[Nyvin]

I really doubt the Democrats would want to remove MN-5 from Anoka and move it south like that.  More likely they'd expand MN-5 into Anoka and move MN-3 more into Hennepin.  

Also the wrap around for MN-2 seems unneeded.   Just keep Goodhue/Wabasha in the district and expand into Rice and Olmsted.  That would be least change anyway.

By 2022 I'd expect the areas that will make up MN-2 and MN-3 to trend even more Dem considering the Twin Cities is the only area with growth in the whole state and all that growth just seems to be more and more Dem voters.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Is that supposed to be a DFL gerrymander?

You did MN-05 wrong. You left Minneapolis with still very DFL southern suburbs. Combining it with Anoka County and northern Hennepin County instead will shore up MN-03 PRETTY easily.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This is using the old Census numbers but regardless there's still plenty of room for movement and keeping both seats Safe D.

MN-05 is D+13.93, MN-03 is D+6.76.

[Nyvin]

Going by 2017 estimates and the future growth over the next three years, it's looking like Anoka+Hennepin will be almost exactly 2 districts,  Carver probably won't be needed at all.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Then MN3 will be even more D.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

The problem here is clearly that we just haven't seen a proper MN map.

Here is MN with 2020 pop estimates. TBH this is a pretty sloppy map and includes a lot of unnecessarily Republican areas in the Minneapolis exurbs in the Dem districts. It doesn't fetishize the muon rules or 💗compactness💗, but real maps don't either. Also this stops short of the really fun stuff, like a thin tendril stretching around the entire northern border of the state all the way along the North Dakota border to Moorhead.

This would be a 5-2 Dem map in the worst case, and maybe even 6-1 Dem for a few cycles if Collin Peterson sticks around to hold down MN-07 for a bit before the inevitable blanching scheduled to occur in the first midterm in the 2020s in which there is a Dem President.





MN-01 (blue) D+6.9
MN-02 (green) D+6.8
MN-03 (purple) D+7.7
MN-04 (red) D+6.4
MN-05 (yellow) D+7.0
MN-06 (cyan) R+16.7
MN-07 (gray) R+11.9

If more compactness is your thing, the Dem districts only really need to take in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro, St. Cloud, Mankato, Rochester, and Duluth/the iron range. The other edges like the Owatonna and Albert Lea/Austin tendrils can be smoothed out without too much partisan effect to still have a Dem leaning map. Maybe the Dem districts drop to D+5-6 rather than D+6-7. And that leaves Republicans neatly "self-packed" in the rural areas. Maybe I'll draw a map like that later, or someone else can do it.

With the Republican trend in rural areas, in many states "self-packing" will increasingly become a problem for Republicans unless they combine rural districts to include Dem trending suburbs, rather than putting the Dem trending suburbs in their own districts or with urban areas.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

And here is a cleaner version (a bit less partisan impact than I thought, actually)

MN-01 (blue) D+6.4 (was D+6.9)
MN-02 (green) D+6.1 (was D+6.
MN-03 (purple) D+6.4 (was D+7.7)
MN-04 (red) D+5.9 (was D+6.4)
MN-05 (yellow) D+7.2 (was D+7.0)
MN-06 (cyan) R+15.4 (was R+16.7)
MN-07 (gray) R+10.9 (was R+11.9)







The rural Republican vote sinks could be made cleaner (a North one and a south one rather than East and West), except for Collin Peterson.

[Ban my account ffs!]

The population isn't only growing in the Twin Cities.  There is also growth occurring in Rochester, Mankato, St. Cloud, Moorhead (Fargo), and in the Alexandria, Detroit Lakes, Park Rapids, Bemidji, Walker, and Brainerd lake regions.

The Minnesota River valley, the International Falls to Warroad areas on the Canadian border, and portions of the Red River valley are shrinking the most.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This map is an abomination.

[Torie]

Is that supposed to be a DFL gerrymander?

You did MN-05 wrong. You left Minneapolis with still very DFL southern suburbs. Combining it with Anoka County and northern Hennepin County instead will shore up MN-03 PRETTY easily.

Hi BRTD. Below is the map that you described, and it does get the job done for the Dems. But I did not claim that what I was drawing was a DFL gerrymander. What I said is that I was drawing a map following the Muon2 rules, and at the margins doing what one could to get up the numbers for the Dems in MN-03.

As you can see, what you want looks facially like a gerrymander, and it lacks "artistic" merit, and I personally dislike ripping out the host city of a metro area from the host county, and placing it with another county, but those are not the Muon2 rules. In this case, the issue is what the Muon2 rules are as to measuring erosity.

And amazingly your map comes close to matching mine when it comes to measuring erosity under the Muon2 rules. First, it loses a road cut going from the county seat of government in Hennepin to the county seat of government in Anoka because the shortest road that is a state highway manages to avoid going into MN-3, beating the road that does go through MN-03 by one tenth of one mile (per mapquest  -whew!). So, so far, you map is in fact superior. You also got very lucky in that that the shortest state road from the Hennepin county seat of government to the Dakota County seat of government does not impinge on MN-03 (which now has all those southern suburbs), which I found amazing, but the Dakota county seat is not centrally located, so the state road runs by the airport across the river without touching MN-03. You are on a roll man!

But then your so far harmonious score runs into some discordant notes. Your map generates an extra  road cut going from the the Hennepin seat of government to the Carver County seat of government, that my map does not. So now our maps are even. Then we zoom in on macro chopped Hennepin County, looking at paved road cuts between  municipalities in Hennepin that cross CD lines, and it turns out that your map has 8 cuts, and mine has 7. So assuming I did this correctly, your map loses the erosity contest by a hair, and is tossed out of the pile. But you got very, very close, despite its facial ugliness that looks like a gerrymander. If the maps were even, and putting aside equality considerations in population, then your map would prevail, in order to reduce the skew. So close, but in the end, no cigar. Maybe with some work moving Hennepin municipalities around, your map could get down to 7 internal road cuts, and then you are good to go. Maybe. That is why God in his infinite wisdom invented powerful computers, to help us find out. Doing it manually is well, laborious and complicated.

Cheers.