2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Minnesota

[ilikeverin]

Yeah, folks without Minnesota ties do like putting the Cities together, but that would never, ever happen (and I appreciate you acknowledging that it wouldn't!) unless Republicans got a trifecta and really felt like flexing their muscles. Keeping Minneapolis and St. Paul separate is sacrosanct.

[ilikeverin]

I thought Wasserman tweeted that map combining the two cities with his tongue firmly in cheek...

Maybe. Do the two cities really hate each other? That seems silly to me.

They do not anymore—at least, not at the levels it used to be—but combining them would be politically radioactive. They, very much, consider themselves to have separate civil institutions even if they get along fairly well now.

[ilikeverin]

I love Strong Towns! Chuck is amazing. Yes, that's where he lives, so you know quite a bit about Brainard already. A lot of folks from the Cities have cabins up in that neck of the woods. Come see me in Buffalo if you take that route.

Both your maps, Torie, are quite nice. The districts near the Cities are fantastic. The Eden Prairie of my childhood would have been horrified to be put into MN-05, but the Eden Prairie of today is begging Metro Transit to extend the light rail out their way... go figure! And I do like the fact that in the second map, the dark brown district includes all of the exurban scatter of the areas north and west of the Cities. Chisago and Stearns Counties, say, are dissimilar in some ways, but in other ways they'd fit pretty well into a district.

What's the partisanship of the Hennepin + Anoka MN-03 (presumably that's how it would be numbered)?

[ilikeverin]

Also, if domination by a jurisdiction (or an “inner city”) is a thing we have a compelling interest in avoiding, why is it ok for Minneapolis to dominate St. Paul but not for St. Paul to dominate smaller suburbs?

Because Minneapolis and St Paul have more in common than St. Paul and Cottage Grove?  Idk just a thought

Clearly, the people who live there and their elected officials don’t agree. This view seems to be coming from people outside who see these large cities as an undifferentiated mass of “inner city” to quote higher up in the thread.

Yeah, it's pretty telling when every single Minnesotan who's wandered into this thread has been shocked and horrified to hear this proposed seriously (rather than as an intellectual exercise, which it is interesting to think about that way). I think folks in Cottage Grove would be pretty upset to see themselves geographically clustered with, say, Bloomington or Coon Rapids rather than with St. Paul.

[ilikeverin]

Here's scenario that I'm not sure has been discussed yet: what if Minnesota keeps their 8th seat? Given all the weirdness with doing the count due to COVID-19, some of the Trump fears with minority responses, and the fact Minnesota's response rate was the best nationwide, I think the possibility is greater than zero.

From what I remember of muon's explanation of 2010, it seems like this is some of how we kept our seat then - Minnesotans are just very, very conscious about filling out census forms, which allowed our last seat to just squeak by.

[ilikeverin]

Here's scenario that I'm not sure has been discussed yet: what if Minnesota keeps their 8th seat? Given all the weirdness with doing the count due to COVID-19, some of the Trump fears with minority responses, and the fact Minnesota's response rate was the best nationwide, I think the possibility is greater than zero.

From what I remember of muon's explanation of 2010, it seems like this is some of how we kept our seat then - Minnesotans are just very, very conscious about filling out census forms, which allowed our last seat to just squeak by.

MN also tends to be the best or one of the best states when it comes to turning out for elections. Minnesotans seem like very engaged citizens compared to the rest of the nation.

You betcha, and we take that with us no matter where we go

It was certainly shocking to me when I moved out of the state to encounter people who hadn't voted or weren't planning to vote. Growing up in MN-03, I essentially had never heard of such a thing.

[ilikeverin]

How should I change this map? I want to protect COI's the most.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a10403f5-7cec-42a5-b546-0dda86c7cf4e

No reason to do a three-way split of Hennepin County. Especially one that links the immediate northern suburbs of Minneapolis (including the only majority non-white city in Minnesota outside of a Reservation) with the exurbs.

Which city is that?

Brooklyn Center.

Brooklyn Center is in MN-05 in that map with Minneapolis. It looks like a two-way split of Hennepin to me.

Hmm... the way you've split up Hennepin in that map does correspond to the classic division of "inner ring" suburbs to "outer ring" ones, which I like (Edina in particular would be delighted to be separated from Minneapolis!), but I agree with BRTD that there's a lot of splits there that might not be necessary. A district that includes Red Wing and Columbia Heights doesn't make a lot of sense.

[ilikeverin]

How should I change this map? I want to protect COI's the most.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a10403f5-7cec-42a5-b546-0dda86c7cf4e

No reason to do a three-way split of Hennepin County. Especially one that links the immediate northern suburbs of Minneapolis (including the only majority non-white city in Minnesota outside of a Reservation) with the exurbs.

Which city is that?

Brooklyn Center.

Brooklyn Center is in MN-05 in that map with Minneapolis. It looks like a two-way split of Hennepin to me.

Map was updated after my post.

Ah, gotcha!

In addition to my previous comments, the MN-04 in the map also violates the West Metro/East Metro split that jim and Del Tachi insist does not exist; if you split Anoka, try to do it by extending a line north of the western border of Ramsay and dividing it like that. You do a better job with Dakota between your 2nd and 3rd districts! Apple Valley and Eagan could probably go either way, and I had no concept of Lakeville whatsoever when I left Minnesota, so I don't know where it belongs.

[ilikeverin]

So should I prioritize keeping two distinct East/West metro districts or North/South?

East/West > North/South

[ilikeverin]

We note that the Metro Area has about 4/7 of the population.

Beginning with the 5-county core, we add Scott and Carver, which gets us to 3.880 district equivalents. Scott is clearly the 6th county, and because 2/3 of its population is in the southeastern panhandle (Chaska, Chanhassen, Victoria, Carver) Carver is the 7th.

Wright and Sherburne are suburban fringe trending into exurban, or in the case of Sherburne moving into the St. Cloud area. Chisago and Isanti are more pure exurban plays.

Sherburne has about the right population to take us to 4 districts. Nonetheless, we add Wright because it makes for a more compact metro area, there are several cities on the Wright-Hennepin line, and keeping Sherburne with Chisago and Isanti provides more population for maintaining the northeast district.

About 70% of Wright's population will be in the Metro districts.



We now simply need to draw a 3-district map and a 4-district map, dividing Wright as we produce the final map.

This is absolutely the gold standard instate-outstate split in Minnesota. Wright definitely > Sherburne.

[ilikeverin]

Although the archive isn't complete, there is literally not a single map on the Minnesota legislature's historical archive of CD maps that combines Minneapolis and St. Paul. Of course, House members were elected on a joint ticket in the 1930s, but that seems to be the one exception since the 1880s, when Minneapolis and St. Paul were indeed combined.

[ilikeverin]

Dean Phillips lives in Deephaven, which is in your MN-05 (it's on Lake Minnetonka).

[ilikeverin]

All of you on this thread will be so upset if Minnesota's population is 30,000 or so bigger than expected and Minnesota keeps its 8th seat.

Au contraire. I think all of us defending Minnesota from jim's vile plots would be delighted for the glorious tundra to maintain its eighth seat!

[ilikeverin]

Aside from what the final population numbers might be, this seems to be the most Dem friendly division of the Twin Cities metro pie. I am a bit surprised it has not been put up yet. 



Now all that is needed is to reverse engineer the COI argument. Well that prong of Anoka used to be or should have been in Hennepin, it is right next door to Minneapolis, and taking in the rest of Anoka just fills out the missing population, and BRTD has relatives in Coon Rapids to boot. The fact that Jimrtex would hate it is proof positive, because there is 100% correlation between what he wants and what is wrong. When was the last time he was even in a place known as full of nice people? We know it is never because he does not like spending time with nice people. That is why he lives in Texas come to think of it.

Moderators, absolutely nothing in the above paragraph is true. I admit that now. So it cannot be infracted because I just denounced it. Thank you.

Honestly, this looks like the most likely outcome to me (or at least something like it).  It's certainly D-leaning, but not so unreasonable that a solidly Democratic-leaning court like the MN SC would have any qualms about choosing it. 

I mean, it certainly makes far more sense than any map combining the Twin Cities (which is both a non-starter for anything other than an aggressive Republican gerrymander and with all due respect to those who disagree, honestly makes no sense from a COI perspective).  Combining the Twin Cities would make sense if you had Republican trifecta or a hyper-partisan Republican State Supreme Court.  However, we have a relatively partisan Democratic State Supreme Court (which was not the case last time). 

Why do believe that the Minnesota Supreme Court will be making the decision, and not assign it to a 5-judge panel as was done in 2001 and 2011? Why do you believe that the 5-judge panel in 2011 was biased? After all, the head of the panel Wilhelmina Wright was subsequently appointed by Mark Dayton to the Minnesota Supreme Court and by Barack Obama to a federal district judgeship.

The current map doesn’t combine the Twin Cities the way your hyper-partisan Republican gerrymander proposal does, for one thing.  Also, the MN SC is significantly more Democratic than it was during the past redistricting cycle.  Nothing but a panel made up of the most hyper-partisan of Republican hacks would even seriously consider a map that combines the Twin Cities; that map was simply wishcasting on your part.

I mean his map is stupid but its hardly a hyper-republican proposal. In the end he even drew it with 4 Clinton districts.

Why do you believe it is stupid?

Minneapolis and St. Paul do have a community of interest. Why are they referred to as the "twin cities"?

Because they're two separate cities with their own identities that are located next to each other. Twins aren't interchangeable. Perhaps you haven't met many.

Sorry, Jim. No matter who draws the districts, they will be drawn by Minnesotans, who would never draw a district that included Minneapolis and St. Paul together, as has been testified by every Minnesotan in this thread, decades of years of map drawing, and even recent experience with this panel in 2000 and 2010.

[ilikeverin]

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.

You know, there's definitely something to what you're saying. Duluth has abundant natural advantages other than the brutal winters, and plenty of charm. There's a local effort to remove some of the urban highway that cuts the city off from its shoreline... if that succeeds, it could realize catalyze something exciting for the city.

[ilikeverin]

Regarding mid-decade redistricting, be careful what you wish for, as MN voters have a history of not liking sleazy stuff. The DFL did something seedy before 1978, with governor Anderson resigning so that he could be appointed senator by the new governor Perpich, his lieutenant governor. Both Perpich and Anderson lost the next election in 1978 by big margins, and MN had Republicans for governor and both senators for the first time of the modern era.

Yeah, of all states, Minnesota is a bad fit for these tactics. Minnesotans take good government seriously! And that's especially true in the case when the DFL can clearly win fair and square.