I think that Ellison's weak showing also helped Hennepin go for the Reps overall.
Yes, that's the main reason. Even with Ramstad it usually goes DFL.
Even now the Reps only won it by a few points. Of course the IP candidate siphoned a few votes from the Republican too obviously (Kerry got about 71% in the district, she and Ellison got about 76%) together, but it was clearly mostly Democrats concerned with Ellison
At first glance it looks pretty damning for Republicans but if you look at the population map, alongside the results it isn't a total disaster for them. Republicans definitely have their work cut out for them in 2008 though.
Not really. Peterson's seat is safe until he retires, MN-5 will never ever ever vote Republican, same is true of MN-4 to a lesser extent, and Oberstar is also super-safe, and his district is even fairly safe without him.
That means they only have a chance of beating Walz, and as I've pointed out before his base is probably too big to crack. They might have a tough time defending Bachmann though (hopefully!)
BTW, Peterson and Oberstar always win every county. So the map looked similar even back in the 4/4 alignment. In 2004 the only country that voted against its incumbent was Rice (the light red one surrounded by all that blue below the metro).
