State Legislative Elections

[Ban my account ffs!]

It was a sizeable massacre here for the Republicans... the house went frm 68/66 Republicans to 85/49 for the DFL.  The senate went from 38/29 Dems to 44/23 Dems.

My hometown defeated their Republican senator for an amazing DFL candidate who likely has a future lined up for her (Possibly governor?).

These are nearly veto-proof majorities. 

The Senate Majority Leader was defeated, however.  Dean Johnson was defeated because of tapes released that revealed him telling pastors not to worry that he had blocked a referendum on gay marriage, because it was already illegal in the state.

I'm almost glad he lost.  We'll get someone new in there that will be better.

[Ban my account ffs!]

There are maps for MN, but they are PDFs and not color coated and pretty like the ones posted here.

It is pretty interesting how the state legislature split.. I see a split on old ethnic lines.  If you ignore the metro area (which is hard to do with so much of the state living there, but just bear with me).. you can see that the farmer and labor DFL strongholds still going.

The Scandinavian farming areas of northwestern, west-central, and southwestern MN stretching down the MInnesota River Valley to about Mankato, and then again in far south-eastern MN have all gone for the DFL.. the same goes for the eastern European labor areas of the iron range/Duluth areas.

The central MN and south central traditionally German areas have gone Republican.  It should also be known that Germans didn't have a very active position in Minnesota politics (at least in comparison with the Norwegians) until 1978... that year was also known as the "minnesota Massacre" when Democrats suffered major losses in the state.

The metro area, where people tend to forget their ethnic heritage, is a more typical picture of the U.S with the inner-city and inner-ring suburbs going DFL, with a slight DFL hold in the St. Paul suburbs while the Minneapolis exurbs go strongly GOP.