2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Minnesota

[Torie]

[Torie]

Is that meant to be a fair map? If so I imagine the Minnesotans are all collectively exploding their heads at the Mpls.-St. Paul district.

I am just channeling Wasserman, and it certainly makes for a clean map. The Dems should win the red CD, and Trump 2020 actually lost the tan CD by a few thousand votes (one can figure these things out quickly when you avoid county chops!).  So in the current brave new world, it is hardly a screw the Dems map. And BRTD might like it, because edgy Dems will thrive in the inner city CD.

I just draw clean maps that make sense, exclusive of the needs of local politicians, at least to start.

[Torie]

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.

[Torie]

Sad.

[Torie]

This map seems to me to be another very reasonable option.

[Torie]

And with the brown CD having a new design, you could adjust the mini county chops in the Twin Cities metro area between the red, tan and brown CD's like this:



It is quite surprising to me how many people some of those relatively far northern counties have, e.g., Crow Wing with some 64,000 people, a bit more than my county, Columbia, in NY has, which is hardly in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what life is like up there.

[Torie]

In fairness Crow Wing is home to Brainerd, which is one of the main towns of Northern Minnesota--the kind of place where farmers might go to buy Christmas presents or spare parts or whatever.

My hometown of Boone is a similar place and the county has a similar population relative to its geographic size/hinterland.

Ah, the founder of the movement below has lived there all his life. I have corresponded with him to pick his brains a bit as to approaches to issues in the micro city that I live in. I did not connect Brainerd to the county, although I knew it was out there in the tundra somewhere, nor realize its size. If I get up there, perhaps via taking this Great Lakes oriented journey (with some detours for personal reasons), that is on my to do list!

https://www.strongtowns.org/

[Torie]

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)?

Thank you, and for your invitation as well, which I shall take you up on post covid. I have not among other things really explored Buffalo (we just zipped through on a journey to spend a week at the Chautauqua Institution of all things; wow that place is unique - the topic for the week was immigration).

The numbers as I drew the CD are below. Trump did not wear well in this part of the world obviously. I see that Dave Leips made on error by including the vote totals for Chanhassen City in both Hennepin and Carver County (presumably the confusion arises from the city having a sliver across the line into Hennepin that has no residents in it), but the double count did not flow through to his totals for the county, so the error I guess did not become instantly obvious to him. But I had to figure out what happened to make sure that I did not make an error!

Man the turnout was high wasn't it? I knew the folks here take their franchise seriously, but this is just amazing to me.

[Torie]

Combining the Twin Cities doesn't necessarily serve the GOP perfectly either. Indeed, a MN GOPmander would do well to combine Minneapolis with areas farther west, soaking up Dem trending suburbs in the Twin Cities metro.

Yes I don't think the contretemps over the marriage or divorce of the twin cities makes that much of a partisan difference, at least given the current profile of the parties, which of course is more subject to change in unknown directions than is usually the case going forward. Good maps that hew to accepted redistricting principles can be made either way, so whatever floats your boat is my attitude.

[Torie]

The MN high court in the 2010 cycle was not partisan when it came to drawing the CD's, and I have no reason to believe that they would be this time. But my guess is that both parties will agree on a map, in part because, as in so many other places, the evolution of MN politics, and where, is unusually uncertain. The map will have 3 Pub CD's, 3 Dem CD's, and one swing CD that will favor the Dems (e.g., Trump 2020 actually lost a CD that would combine Wright, Carver, Scott and Dakota counties by a few thousand votes), if the Pub Party continues to embrace a politics that is off putting to better educated suburban voters.

[Torie]

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.

Why the extra county chop between MN-07 and MN-06, when you can rearrange slightly and do the tiniest of micro-chops of Otter Tail County?

[Torie]

This thread is a good exhibit as to why using COI beyond compactness and municipal and county lines, and rural versus urban, and metro area demarcations, tends to be something of a sh*t show. One can argue almost anything. JMO. On this issue, nobody ever changes their mind. What I find fun, is that when one COI algorithm starts backfiring on what benefits your favorite party, often well, one just changes their perception as to what COI metrics to use. Cynical old bastard I know. Pay no mind to my demented ramblings.

[Torie]

Is this with the 2020 census figures, or the 2018 estimates?

[Torie]

I would never been so foolish as to suggest BRTD that Minnesotans do not have their odd little fetishes. I follow yours rather religiously these days in fact, and I forgive you for each and every one.   

[Torie]

Is this with the 2020 census figures, or the 2018 estimates?

Are you referring to my maps?

If so, 2019 estimates projected forward to April 1, 2020.

I was thinking about a possible rotation. Moving MN-6 down to the Mississippi River, taking parts of Ramsey just north of St. Paul into MN-5. Putting Brooklyn Center, Robbindale, and Crystal into MN-3, and then pushing MN-2 up into Hennepin (Bloomington?). What do you think?

I can't really draw what you described, because I don't have your population numbers, and your verbal description confuses me, but if it entails an extra county or municipal chop or both, that would be a negative. My inference from the numbers I saw from replicating the metro part of your posted map, is that among other things, given that  Bloomington has more people than that the south suburbs CD absorbs than it lost in Washington County, suggests that it won't work, and Richfield is wedged in between to boot (see map below).

In other news, someday I hope to post an essay on this COI thing based on intangible factors. Even if real, rather than self interested partisan spin, sometimes it would seem to me to have divergent COI's in a CD, to incentivize compromise, rather than trying to maximize homogeneity.  Other times it would not, if it means one side of the COI divide gets all of the pie, and the other side none, rather than a compromise resolution. The migration towards the "Manicheanization"  of the polity, where each side views the other as just plain evil, that must be stamped out and destroyed, is just not my cup of tea, either for facilitating good policy or to avoid having to endure being exposed to very caustic commentary that reveals little other than ambition and anger.



Again, not knowing your population data, here is another possible concept.

[Torie]

So can anyone make an argument as to why they believe Minneapolis and St. Paul will be combined that isn't "I'd prefer it that way" or "I, a person on a message board and not a DFL political insider, think it makes sense"? As in why the the DFL House and Walz would agree to it or the Minnesota Supreme Court would do so despite DFL opposition?

Why are you so deferential to Tim Walz and the DFL?

I'm a former DFL precinct chair and district convention delegate.

Why does that make you deferential to Tim Walz?

Whether BRTD is deferential to Walz is not relevant. He is saying he has some knowledge of DFL politics, and based on that, he believes Walz hates it, and the DFL controlled MN Supreme Court hates it, so even if the concept is even better than the Greek ideal of perfection, the concept is going to be dumped in the trash can.

So that leaves you to make the case that what the power players want is misguided, not in their best interest, whatever. As I recall, most of the predictions as to how maps will look on here, or elsewhere, typically prove to be the antithesis of clairvoyance. The only one that was spot on was one that I drew that was adopted into law "as is."  

[Torie]

The "irony" of the discussion above  is that your iteration is probably the most favorable for the Democrats. The downside for some perhaps is that it reduces from 2 to 1 the number of CD's that would be hospitable to "bold progressives," leaving the other three metro based CD's  "at risk" of hosting "mushy moderates." Whether that concern has any traction with Mr. Walz, or Mr. BRTD, etc., I have no idea.

[Torie]

Just why are the usual suspects of mapping nerds more obsessed by Minnesota than any other state this cycle? Inquiring minds want to know!

Ten years ago the center of the universe was Michigan btw.

I also wonder how many hours Jimrtex spent preparing his tour de horizon of the history of Minnesota CD's since the time that rocks cooled. That would have taken me a week or more.

[Torie]

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.

[Torie]

Never a dull moment in the redistricting world I must say. NY needs such a lawsuit, although given the state of NYS courts in general, I would suggest using the federal courts if possible.

The COI prong of the list of principles basically can mean anything, since it includes everything but the kitchen sink. Granted it is lower down the list than compactness or chops. There does not seem much teeth in hewing to metro area lines - to wit nothing about the pack and cover standard, and the map drawn for CD's reflects that as a couple of CD's stretch out into the hinterlands, particularly that CD that stretches south along the Mississippi River.

[Torie]

The 2020 data for MN is in, so I thought it time to put up my map! Well I guess not for the population figures, just the 2020 election results. Never mind.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/562164e2-3651-4f41-8781-e3c06a37f26b

[Torie]

How many posts will this thread get before new data is released in fall? More or fewer than 10?

Least change maps that a court would draw in the event of a deadlock are boring.

[Torie]

Here is my least change court drawn map to put in the hopper. Not much happens vis a vis the existing map.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ecd8e1ba-c809-4be2-91f5-4e7c3a81b549

[Torie]

If the Court draws the map, it will almost certainly be a least change map, with the changes focused on reducing or eliminating existing county splits where they exist. I revised slightly my least change map above to more closely hew to that metric. The net partisan changes are close to nill.

[Torie]

If the Court draws the map, it will almost certainly be a least change map, with the changes focused on reducing or eliminating existing county splits where they exist. I revised slightly my least change map above to more closely hew to that metric. The net partisan changes are close to nill.

From what I understand although in outstate County splits were minimal, there were some "unneccesary" splits for community/ to reduce township splits. Anoka is a good example and its a good example in Anoka county which really is a county which should atleast be split between the old Menomin county where some of the original Minneapolis suburbs came originally.

I understand. The toggle lines show where the changes were made, other than Northern Washington County, where it was moved from MN-06 to MN-08, without changing the existing line between it and MN-04. So MN-06 loses that bit, but picks up Coon Rapids in Anoka County.

Least change is particularly likely here since the Court drew the existing map in a very competent and non partisan way, so it is particularly appropriate to use it as the basis for a new map. I might note that the Court shares my fondness for rectangular shapes.




Addendum: Per incoming, I adjusted the linked map to unite the city of Northfield, but not in the district the source of the incoming preferred.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ecd8e1ba-c809-4be2-91f5-4e7c3a81b549