Something pretty damn amazing I just discovered about the Mankato area

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I recently embarked on one of my most ambitious projects yet, to calculate how every legislative district in Minnesota voted in 2004 with the Bush/Kerry numbers. The first one I did of course was District 23, my own district. The numbers I got were actually pretty shocking. To explain the districts, in Minnesota the state is divided into 67 Senate district. Each district is then divided in half, each half being a House district, and labeled by the number and then an A or B.

Anyway, the numbers:

23A (North Mankato + St. Peter + rurals) - Bush 50.82%/Kerry 47.96%
23B (Mankato proper + a few crappy rural/suburban areas) - Kerry 54.14%/Bush 44.29%

And the district as a whole: Kerry 51.09%/Bush 47.51%
And the state of Minnesota as a whole: Kerry 51.09%/Bush 47.61%

Seriously, that closeness is almost erie.

Bellwether district? It'll definitely be interesting to compare the Klobuchar/Kennedy numbers to the numbers statewide. But I was pretty shocked by those numbers, I never had any clue I lived somewhere THAT close to the state as a whole.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Wow, and this is a district just to the west:

25: Kerry 51.10%/Bush 47.50%

Just .01% off for each candidate in a bordering district!

13/67 done so far by the way. I just realized how much hell it is to do those non-Duluth districts in St. Louis county...

[Nym90]

That is quite amazing it would be that close of a match, literally matching the Kerry percentage to the nearest hundreth of a percent.

I reckon that's close enough that your vote alone might have been the one to put it at even parity.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Kerry got 21,955 votes, so no.

Anyone one precinct though could've made the difference.

[nclib]

What were the results for the city of Mankato? (it sounds like it's pretty liberal)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Kerry 55.35%
Bush 43.06%

Bush only won one precinct (an affluent subdivision)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

17/67 done.

Bleh, this will take a long time. But I will get it done.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

New results. Not as exact bellwether but pretty damn close:

Senate:
Independence    ROBERT FITZGERALD    1050   3.12   
Republican    MARK KENNEDY    12366   36.80   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    AMY KLOBUCHAR    19854   59.08   
Green    MICHAEL JAMES CAVLAN    237   0.71   

Governor:
Independence    PETER HUTCHINSON AND MAUREEN REED    2198   6.55   
Republican    TIM PAWLENTY AND CAROL MOLNAU    15179   45.21   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    MIKE HATCH AND JUDI DUTCHER    15621   46.53   
Green    KEN PENTEL AND DANENE PROVENCHER    288   0.86

Secretary of State:
Independence    JOEL SPOONHEIM    1102   3.39   
Republican    MARY KIFFMEYER    13985   42.97   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    MARK RITCHIE    15888   48.81   
For Independent Voters    BRUCE KENNEDY    1538   4.73   

State Auditor:
Independence    LUCY GEROLD    1537   4.78   
Republican    PATRICIA ANDERSON    12774   39.72   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    REBECCA OTTO    16881   52.49   
Green    DAVE BERGER    935   2.91   

Attorney General:
Independence    JOHN JAMES    1392   4.31   
Republican    JEFF JOHNSON    12672   39.19   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    LORI SWANSON    17454   53.98