US House Redistricting: Minnesota

[ilikeverin]

Yes but like I said the parts that are going to be displaced out of MN-5 if this somehow passed (unlikely, Dayton would veto any map that combined the Twin Cities and the courts aren't likely to draw that either) all would've been strong for Dayton. Emmer's strongest legislative seat that is mostly in MN-5 is 45A where he got 40.97% to Dayton's 46.32%. And that's including parts of Plymouth in it that are not currently in MN-5. Most of the inner-ring suburb seats had Dayton winning by about 20 points. All the Republican parts of Hennepin county are already in MN-3.

Also Obama won Hennepin County outside of Minneapolis by about 12 points, so it's kind of foolish to assume all those independent voters are Republican-leaning and that the same turnout numbers will apply in presidential years as the evidence shows otherwise.

We totally agree on Minnesota regarding redistricting, but few believe in our little way of seeing things. Such is life.

Don't worry, all sanes know that putting Minneapolis and St. Paul in the same CD would cause rioting.

[ilikeverin]

Basically it'll be an incumbent protection map, now, so jimrtex's heretical wet dream will thankfully not be a reality.

[ilikeverin]

I don't think your plan is far off from what will end up happening.

Yeah.  Your MN-03 is a thing of beauty.

[ilikeverin]

The only place in western Stearns that'd be an easy commute is St. Joseph, which is not a suburb but a college town (and surprisingly Democratic considering the college is an all-female Catholic one, I'd suspect any college conservative enough to be one gender would be Republican.)

There's also St. John's, which is very close.  They're essentially a coed college spread out over two campuses.

[ilikeverin]

St.Johns University is 3-1/2 miles from St.Joseph, and College of St.Benedict only has 2000 students.

For goodness sake, why do people keep looking at the two colleges separately?

[ilikeverin]

Haha.  I take it you've never met Sarah Anderson, Bob.  I trust many of the people commenting in this thread to be less ignorant than Rep. Anderson.

[ilikeverin]

Hard to argue with those maps Mike. In short, they are as boring as hell! 

I doubt it will happen. In the last map the Courts argued about the relevent merits of having an outstate district span either all of Southern Minnesota, all of Western Minnesota, or all of Northern Minnesota. The court claimed the facts pointed to the Southern span being the preferable partition.

To swap the South Western corner of Minnesota would reverse that decision.

Population trends in MN-07 vis a vis the balance of the state, and where the county lines are, makes that a tougher sell now, I would think. The 1st to get to the SW corner of the state would have to be a thin as a pencil.

I know for some reason roads have primacy in CD determination, but, fwiw, when we had to memorize stuff about the ecology of Minnesota in middle school it was always the case that we'd always lump the entire western fringe of the state in the "prairie" biome, contrasting with deciduous forest (the Twin Cities) and coniferous forest (Up North).  See here, for instance.  A western district would be different, sure, but not as bad as, say, a "northern" district, or, worse, the monstrosity of the Republican "middle-northern" district, because the northwestern corner and the southwestern corner have something in common (they are both "East Dakota").

[ilikeverin]

Either of those chops makes sense.

[ilikeverin]

Eh, the DFL map is certainly fairly radical, but I find their MN-03 quite intriguing; it manages to throw together a bunch of functionally-equivalent suburbs, except for the random southern St. Paul suburbs that don't belong.  Plymouth and, say, Eagan probably have more in common with each other than Plymouth and Independence.  The real horror in their map is MN-04, of course, and to a lesser extent MN-06 (which should not reach to Goodhue County).

I'm honestly quite terrified of MN-03 in the GOP map, which I can't believe anyone would ever think is at all a logical thing to do.  Brooklyn Park with Hutchinson?  What?!  And, of course, their outstate hijinx.

It'll be interesting to see what the courts do.

[ilikeverin]

That's a very nice map, muon.  To the extent possible, I'd switch out the inner Hennepin suburbs for the Anoka suburbs to make MN-05 the Hennepin-only district, not MN-03, but I like it   Giving Woodbury and Cottage Grove to MN-04 is a bit unfortunate, but adding the northern suburbs of St. Paul gives the district an "intermediate" region.

Looks like trading out the Anoka bits in MN-05 for precinct W3 Brooklyn Park, New Hope, Crystal, Robbinsdale, Brooklyn Center, Golden Valley, St. Louis Park, Richfield, the airport, and Bloomington does the trick.  If you give up the "one district only in Hennepin" policy, you could also give Columbia Heights, Fridley, and Spring Lake Park back to MN-05 in exchange for Hopkins, New Hope, Crystal, and bits of St. Louis Park.

How do your proposed districts stand up to your partisan bias metrics?

[ilikeverin]

More info is here; maps will be here.

[ilikeverin]

More info is here; maps will be here.

Surely, the maps have been finalized. How could nothing have leaked?

That wouldn't be Minnesota Nice.

Outsiders just don't understand!

[ilikeverin]

Hmm, the maps look nice.  The Metro is well done.  At first I puzzled at some of the west metro splits, but then I saw that, say, yeah, the parts of Plymouth in SD 46 are indeed like St. Louis Park and Hopkins.  I'd put Wayzata in with 33B for sure, but I'd assume there was some population weirdness going on.

[ilikeverin]

Wikipedia says Bonoff lives in Hopkins; the Minnesota Legislature says Minnetonka.  Are we sure what district she lives in?

[ilikeverin]

That seems like a less-than-insane map.  Though I wonder whether the courts, etc., might like the districts a bit more connected than that.  The Walz southern district has I-90, but the north and middle ones are a bit more random.

[ilikeverin]

Your most recent maps make angels cry, muon.

[ilikeverin]

Any thoughts what the DFL would draw if they have total control in 2020?

That probably depends on whether they want to violate the usual sensibilities by linking Mpls to outer suburbs. The public has not looked highly on those type of games in MN. Minnesota nice and all.

No one except partisans cares enough about gerrymandering to take it out on the offending party, ever.

Yes, but members of political parties are residents of their state, too.  Given Minnesotans' very limited experience with single-party control of government, anything could happen, including a coalition of Republicans and "Good Government" Democrats trying to force through a decent map.

[ilikeverin]

Possible configurations:

B) 4-3

1) Duluth-Northern Exurbs-St.Cloud
2) Western Minnesota - Manitoba to Iowa, with a somewhat irregular border.
3) Southeastern Minnesota.

This version exchanges St.Cloud for Brainerd and Bemidji.  Like the previous version this will require about 27,000 persons shifted from Sherburne to the metro area.

This one seems very nice!