2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Minnesota

[Nyvin]

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).

[Nyvin]

I made a map with no Municipality splits,  it doesn't have 0 population deviation though.



https://davesredistricting.org/join/15175da9-882a-4e0b-bb50-4396e279e8f6

I still don't see any legit reason Carver County needs to be put in MN-2.

I can understand the reasoning behind putting Woodbury into MN-2 though, it makes the rest of the map easier to deal with.

[Nyvin]

Moving MN-3 into Dakota County, uhh, yeah not happening.

That map is about as far from least change as possible,  it's pretty much a map drawn from scratch. 

[Nyvin]

It's a good map for Republicans.   I've never seen anyone draw MN-2 in that manner, that's definitely unique.

[Nyvin]

It's almost like the court prioritized keeping the partisan balance of the districts the same.  Obviously that's impossible everywhere with the Twin Cities growing so much faster than the rest of the state, but they really didn't shift any districts meaningfully in either direction.  MN-1 shift 1 point, MN-2 didn't really move much at all, and MN-6 moved only about 3 points left.

If they took a different approach they could've had a bigger impact on partisanship but kinda avoided that IMO.

[Nyvin]

Basically least change. Glad MN-02 is slightly bluer and MN-06 seems like it could become competitive eventually

It's really just Carver that's a big problem for R's in that district. The rest of the district is lower education than the rest of Minneapolis suburbia.

For now…
It’d probably take quite a lot and still unlikely to flip this decade but I guarantee you gentrification is coming, especially since the eastern suburbs are already more developed.

Anoka has been pretty damn stagnant for 20 years, Carver has moved left a lot but St. Clouds and Wright have moved right. There just isn't enough potential leftward trending areas for this district to become competitive at the presidential level.

St Cloud is definitely moving left, the Dems flipped the senate seat there just in 2020, Biden definitely improved there from Clinton too.   Carver is moving left too, the rest of the district is just kinda meh, not moving significantly either way.

[Nyvin]

So anyone got links to the state legislative maps?

This is boring but also about what I expected.

House
https://davesredistricting.org/join/67a3209f-3d4b-448f-86f0-18711d703553

Senate
https://davesredistricting.org/join/a0e056df-ee6f-41fd-b1fb-ff62de298ffd

[Nyvin]

I don't think it's settled law, but doesn't seem like congressional redistricting mid-decade is allowed in MN.

[Nyvin]

https://twitter.com/RedistrictNet/status/1766176029037515115

This is proposed in the State House and interestingly all 20 sponsors are Democrats.   It list proportionality directly in the language (section 7.25) -

[7.25] Districts must not be drawn with the effect of unduly favoring or disfavoring any political
party. Districts shall be subjected to a test of partisan fairness using the standard of
proportionality as the benchmark for fairness.

It also doesn't seem to list anything regarding compactness either.   I'd kinda be okay with this passing really.