2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Minnesota

[Torie]

Did you adjust for expected population losses in the 3 out state districts?

No I just used the DRA 2019 numbers, which do reflect the population changes from the 2010 census in the manner you suggest, at least to some extent. I can't draw based on what is unknown, but I doubt the final numbers will upset the apple cart that much. We shall see.

[Torie]

Colin Peterson appears to be totally clueless about the process, and what Court's do in the case a map cannot be passed, and they have to draw the map. Or perhaps he has not been informed that MN is retaining 8 CD's. Sad!

[Torie]

Colin Peterson appears to be totally clueless about the process, and what Court's do in the case a map cannot be passed, and they have to draw the map. Or perhaps he has not been informed that MN is retaining 8 CD's. Sad!

It looks like from the URL this was a quote from a Politico story in January, so it’s not so bad for him.

Indeed. Unfair in fact. It was expected that MN would probably lose a seat, and quite possible in that event that his former CD would be sliced and diced. That is certainly what my maps did!

[Torie]

MN does not have fajita strips? Who knew?

[Torie]

I don't think this orgy of metro county chopping to move the quad set of metro districts north, to unpack the 3 northern CD's a bit as they move north out of Hennepin, Ramsey and Washington, and thereby shove MN-02 north, as they slice off the southern exurban ends of Carver and Dakota, is going to fly with the Court unless it hews to the proportional metric, rather than the geographic metric, which has not been the case in the past. It also snatches away a  competitive district of course, so that it will forever be a boring election night in MN when it comes to CD results. So let's see what cleaning up the chop orgy does from a partisan standpoint. How many purloined PVI points are in play?

[Torie]

Below is the cleanest least change map. MN-02 has a PVI of 0, and Biden won it by 5 [7.2] points - almost identical to the existing CD [the existing MN-02 being Biden 6.8%]. The Dem map is in LOL territory. The Courts are not going there, but I would not be surprised if they don't just stamp the Torie map and call it a day. If the Dems want to try to pick the partisan pocket in MN, they need to show more skill than they what they just published. What they did is amateur hour.

[Torie]

Here we go. It is not exact, because not only do the MN Dems hate county lines, they also seem to hate census blocks. Anyway, there is no point in depicting governmental jurisdictional lines, when it is all about red versus blue here. MN-8 and MN-01 shave the Trump 2020 margin by 3 points each. The taking of MN-02 off the competitive table is mostly about moving the heavily Dem and sizable city of Woodbury into it in Washington County, and shedding Pub places elsewhere plus the Northfield gift to MN-01 as BRTD immediately noticed of course.

Speaking of Northfield, I remember flying to a bridge tournament in Minneapolis, and sat next to this long haired guy with granny glasses with a copy of Gravity's Rainbow sitting in his lap. I said, hey you must be going to Carlton College right? He looked at me kind of shocked, and asked how I knew that. That would be telling I replied.  

https://davesredistricting.org/join/4a5b978b-6365-436e-8687-fc4fef70a799

Oh, what is this about MN-02 getting redder? It is the same in my beautiful least change map. Altas critters always seem to assume the courts are packed with hacks. That displays a shameful degree of cynicism and lack of respect for the courts. Cleanse thyself.

[Torie]

All the Dem proposal does to MN-2 is add more of Washington while shrinking the district northward by removing Goodhue, Wabasha, Rice, and a small portion of Scott and Dakota.    MN-2 needs to shrink by 19k people and MN-1 needs to grow by 23k people.  

How is adding Carver county to MN-2 in anyway at all "least change"?  There's absolutely nothing requiring that whatsoever.  Also adding more of Rice to MN-2 is a completely unneeded change, there's nothing pulling the district southward or westward in anyway at all.  All of the metro districts need to shrink so if you're moving MN-2 south or west it's for nothing but partisan purposes.

Expand MN-1 northward into the district that needs to shrink until you get population equity and then adjust MN-2 as needed.  That is least change.

The Dem proposal might have added more of Washington then they needed to, but at least that can be explained by the other districts needing to shrink in the metro (kind of explained anyway).

Well draw your own least change map pretending that you are non partisan. And then we can each submit are respective least change maps to the court in amicus briefs. Granted maybe you will want to argue the Dem map is the most perfect least change map, and incorporate it by reference. Nothing surprises me out there anymore. Nothing.

And why are we sure it will go to the state court? Wasn't it in the federal court last time?

No, my bad, it was the state court and they used the least change metric. The map this round of course would be a least change from its prior map. And the current map shows great deference to metro areas, jurisdictional lines and compactness. The court obviously was brainwashed by Muon2.

[Torie]

The above map I think is more likely to fly than the Dem map. Here is a close to a very least change map that has MN-02 at Biden 8.2%. I still like my first map best however since the CD's are more compact, at Biden 7.2%. It should make for an interesting lawsuit, which is where it is likely headed  if the mindset of the legislature is even remotely similar to the posters on this thread.

[Torie]

After going through many iterations, based on what appear to be the algorithms the court used a decade ago in drawing the CD map, below is my best guess as to what the court will draw for this round. Granted the parties should agree to a map like this themselves, but the current dyspeptic and perfervid mood of the public square probably precludes doing anything that is remotely that reasonable.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a185cc0d-a42b-4eb8-b6fe-7e6cd8871ad8

[Torie]

After going through many iterations, based on what appear to be the algorithms the court used a decade ago in drawing the CD map, below is my best guess as to what the court will draw for this round. Granted the parties should agree to a map like this themselves, but the current dyspeptic and perfervid mood of the public square probably precludes doing anything that is remotely that reasonable.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a185cc0d-a42b-4eb8-b6fe-7e6cd8871ad8

Uh why did you split St. Anthony in the most illogical way possible putting each part opposite of its respective county and put New Brighton in the 5th?

To minimize the size of the muni-chop, which with compactness, and urban cohesion, gets a very high weight with the court last round, more than that of county chops in fact. If, as a tie breaker you put rather small St. Anthony in two baskets, as it crosses county lines, this makes the size of the muni-chop tiny, and the smallest available no matter how you cut it.

The finding of who gets the "illogical" diss award is driven by the algorithm ones uses. I was trying to channel that of what I "divine" to be that of the Court.  In the borderland between large diverse multi-citied urban counties in particular, there is much to be said for such a metric.  That is particularly true as an aside, in states where the cities, vis a vis the county in which they sit, have the bulk of the power. Another way to put it, it matters almost nothing at all, whether Hudson, NY, as a city, not a town or a village, but a city. What the county can impose on Hudson in NY, whether it be in Columbia County, or adjacent Greene County, is minimal.*




*One thing I do not entirely understand, is where the village is bisected by two towns. Who controls what in each bit of the Venn diagram must come down to  cost line items. What share, you village you, do you share in the town budget line items, the portion of which is in our town? How is the share determined? Is that per NYS or County statute, contract, litigation, or mix and match?

[Torie]

Here is the alternative. Some muni needs to be split somewhere. The idea is to find the spots that generate the smallest splits in population that are clean and minimize population variance.

[Torie]

That's OK. That's why we have courts. An alternative would be trials by endurance, but that went out of fashion in the Middle Ages.

[Torie]

Innovations are inimical to the least change metric.

[Torie]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/824638e2-fb9a-4287-a2e3-c0d77c02567b

If I could change it, probably something like this, have mn06 take northern Washington so MN08 takes more of MN07 which takes part of MN01 which takes MN02 which finally takes parts of Carver from MN02. Overall no significant partisanship changes. MN01 stays the same while MN02 becomes Biden +10 . Overall improvement to both COI in my opinion and improvement to paritsan fairness in making median seat a Biden district.

How is that defined mathematically here?

[Torie]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/824638e2-fb9a-4287-a2e3-c0d77c02567b

If I could change it, probably something like this, have mn06 take northern Washington so MN08 takes more of MN07 which takes part of MN01 which takes MN02 which finally takes parts of Carver from MN02. Overall no significant partisanship changes. MN01 stays the same while MN02 becomes Biden +10 . Overall improvement to both COI in my opinion and improvement to paritsan fairness in making median seat a Biden district.

How is that defined mathematically here?

You add up the 4th and the 5th districts ordered by margins and divide by 2, like how you calculate any other median with an even number of objects.

Thank you.  I am not sure that is very meaningful where the gap is large in the two data points that are summed.

[Torie]

By the way how college educated is Duluth anyway? Unlike the rest of the iron range counties other than Cook which is tourism it is actually more D than it has been in any presidential election I can see for a while. If you exclude Duluth and Cook County Trump actually slightly improved his margin in the rest of the iron range but the swing in Duluth/Cook was enough to swing the iron range left overall.

I don't know the numbers but Duluth does contain a branch of the University of Minnesota system. UMD has I believe around 10,000 students.

Duluth would be a hip post industrial artist and outdoors person haven already if the climate were better. Give it another 20 years, and it will be the next Traverse City, as a summer haven to frolic. Duluth is one place off the beaten path I want to visit before I sleep.