2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Minnesota

[EastAnglianLefty]

Here's a map with 4 safely Democratic Twin Cities districts:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/99a07e45-d71f-4c83-a802-dfa217975067

FWIW, Obama won this 7th by 10 points in 2008, but realistically it's unlikely to be any more than the most outside of outside shots in wave years.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The question is whether the DFL want a secure 4-3 or are happy with a 3-1-3, with the 2nd as a swing seat trending mildly Democratic. You can shift that into lean bordering on likely D territory without needing particularly ugly lines. There's pretty much no chance that the 3rd won't be made safe, though.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The question is whether the DFL want a secure 4-3 or are happy with a 3-1-3, with the 2nd as a swing seat trending mildly Democratic. You can shift that into lean bordering on likely D territory without needing particularly ugly lines. There's pretty much no chance that the 3rd won't be made safe, though.

I wonder if the DFL might choose to give Craig the safe seat rather than Phillips, since she seems like a weaker candidate.

That's difficult to do without seriously ugly lines and/or splitting either Minneapolis or St. Paul. The suburbs on the southern side of the Mississippi are much less Democratic than those north or west of the Twin Cities.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Minneapolis plus southern Hennepin and Anoka plus the rest of Hennepin is a combination that works well enough. Clinton won both districts and Anoka and outer Hennepin trended pretty hard to Biden, so I don't think Phillips would be any worse off than he is currently with that kind of seat.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Most fair maps seem to settle on an arrangement of four urban seats and three rural seats, anchored by Duluth, St. Cloud and Rochester respectively.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/357b23bf-6a5e-427f-8c90-274e1423e1dd

This map is an attempt to draw 5 Twin Cities-focused seats (two of which take in St. Cloud and Rochester) and two rural ones. In practice the St. Cloud and Rochester districts end up primarily taking in exurbs of the Twin Cities rather than outer suburbs, but it was interesting as a thought experiment.

I prioritised neat shapes and keeping similar sets of suburbs together rather than respecting county boundaries, so there are a fair number of extra splits around the Twin Cities. In particular, MN-3 now extends across northern Hennepin, southern Anoka, northern Ramsey and northern Washington. Nevertheless, I feel it's quite cohesive taken as a whole.

I drew this with partisan data turned off, but it looks like a clear 4R-3D map, though MN-2 might be competitive in good Democratic years if trends in Rochester and Dakota County continue.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Uhmmm...how can you be this dense?  This is unequivocally not a racial thing.  A unified MSP district is not even 1/3 non-white (30.8%).  Such a district logically results from a thought exercise that groups the most similar places in MN together based on several non-political criteria (i.e., density, demographics, history, development, transportation, etc.)  More concretely, Longfellow and Highland Park simply have a lot more in common than Longfellow and Hopkins or Highland Park and Cottage Grove do.  Moreso, this approach is even more justifiable from a racial standpoint because it would combine all of the predominantly Black/Asian neighborhoods in MSP into a single district where these communities would have a better chance of representation aligned with their actual population rather than being sidelined as politically irrelevant constituencies in White, suburb-heavy split districts.  Separating the two cities is a de facto racial crack of MSP.

This might be a convincing argument if jimrtex hadn't been making transparently bad faith claims that an MSP district was required to avoid cracking the Hmong population.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I seem to recall having this exact same argument ten years ago...and look what map the court drew!

And actually for that matter please also note the GOP passed map that Dayton vetoed that didn't combine the Twin Cities either.

10 years ago, Minneapolis and St. Paul had more population than would fit into a district. It is the loss of the district that makes this feasible.

In point of fact, they had 4655 more people than the district average. I do not think that the reason the idea went nowhere was because you would have had to remove a couple of outlying precincts.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Obviously that metro arrangement isn't happening, but that arrangement also splits St. Cloud in half. I think a neater arrangement would be to stick Benton and Sherburne in with MN-7, probably also with Todd and Morrison, in return for giving NW Minnesota to MN-6.

[EastAnglianLefty]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/457efc6a-abe1-4392-a284-fcfe34cab9b9
This is designed to be a Dem-friendly counterpart of the concept map I made previously. MN-02 is drawn to be "ideal" CoI-wise but also in a way that helps Dems; it probably moves very slightly to the left. MN-03 becoming more GOP-friendly is inevitable but I cushioned things for Dean Phillips by giving him some heavily Dem suburbs in the north of Hennipen County. MN-01, in this iteration, barely moves right at all. MN-07 gets eliminated, with Fischbach facing a primary with either Stauber or Emmer.
The MSP districts reflect the division between north and south parts of the metro, though the specifics of the border between 3 and 5 are very much in line with a laser-focus on helping Dean Phillips.

Is your map going to get through both houses of the legislature?

This is a question that could equally be asked of your maps, and the answer would be a definite no. Why precisely do you think that the Minnesota courts would be any more sympathetic to your opinions than any other Minnesotan?

[EastAnglianLefty]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/457efc6a-abe1-4392-a284-fcfe34cab9b9
This is designed to be a Dem-friendly counterpart of the concept map I made previously. MN-02 is drawn to be "ideal" CoI-wise but also in a way that helps Dems; it probably moves very slightly to the left. MN-03 becoming more GOP-friendly is inevitable but I cushioned things for Dean Phillips by giving him some heavily Dem suburbs in the north of Hennipen County. MN-01, in this iteration, barely moves right at all. MN-07 gets eliminated, with Fischbach facing a primary with either Stauber or Emmer.
The MSP districts reflect the division between north and south parts of the metro, though the specifics of the border between 3 and 5 are very much in line with a laser-focus on helping Dean Phillips.

Is your map going to get through both houses of the legislature?

This is a question that could equally be asked of your maps, and the answer would be a definite no. Why precisely do you think that the Minnesota courts would be any more sympathetic to your opinions than any other Minnesotan?

I recognize that no map will be passed by the Minnesota legislature. The Republicans control the Senate, the Democrats control the House. They have already laid out the procedure when the legislature fails to act.

Please (re)read this article, and take the time to actually read Hippert v Ritchie

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=374399.msg7941252#msg7941252

(1) The legislature is not going to pass a congressional map.

(2) The map will be drawn by the Minnesota courts (see Growe v Emison)

(3) The day after the the apportionment numbers are announced, suit will be filed that Minnesota does not have seven congressional districts. The Minnesota Supreme Court will take jurisdiction, but delay action until the legislature fails to act.

The court only has authority to correct an omission or commission by the legislature. The legislature is not going to pass a congressional map.

(4) Minnesota statute requires a map 25 weeks before the primary. Sooner or later Tim Walz is going to admit that the legislature is not going to act regardless of how many special sessions he calls.

(5) The Supreme Court will use the same procedures as were used in 2001 and 2011. The panel will repeat the analysis done in 2001 when they switched to a 5:3 plan over the objections of the DFL and R hacks, and conclude that 4:3 fits the state geography. Nobody has ever argued that going out to St. Cloud is a good idea.

(6) My map preserves the existing three out-state districts while adjusting their population upward. It is a slam dunk.

I realise that you think "I am extremely arrogant" is a good argument, but reasonable minds can differ on this one.

In any case, it's perfectly possible to assign 4 seats to the metro whilst putting Minneapolis and St. Paul in separate districts, and that is the bit that people are actually arguing with you about.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think he just wanted to accuse you of arrogance.

[EastAnglianLefty]

If the court prioritise COIs above county splits, you could put the Anoka panhandle in MN-5, the rest of Anoka in MN-3 and just shift as many first-ring suburbs of Minneapolis into MN-5 as you need to get population equality.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I doubt Ilhan Omar wants to take a heaping pile of Anoka County, which would vote against her in a primary. And she's very much part of the DFL establishment, so her opinion matters to map drawers unlike AOC.

I actually would argue that Omar may prefer taking in Anoka county rather than the surrounding blue suburbs in Hennepin.

Omar's big threat comes from a primary. Having Minneapolis in the seat guarantees her safety in a general, but a primary challenger could possibly take her down. Having the blue suburbs of Hennepin shores up Omar in a general-election sense, but it decreases her odds of holding down in a primary, since these very blue voters could turn against her (as many did in the 2020 primary).

Anoka county is much more red, which would make her seat closer than her current. But in the end, that's not the threat that she's facing down. Meanwhile, the purple county of Anoka comes with the benefit of having fewer registered D voters who could go against her Minneapolis base and depose her.

So, if Omar is looking to shore herself up primary-wise, Anoka is the way to go.

This is a very good point when you consider the map of her 2020 primary: https://www.startribune.com/see-which-minneapolis-neighborhoods-district5-precinct-map-carried-ilhan-omar-victory-2020-dfl-democrat-primary/568966621/

Pretty much all the precincts Omar lost were in Minneapolis' western suburbs or the bits of Minneapolis adjacent to them.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I took a crack at drawing state legislative maps based on minimising splits of counties and of municipalities. I didn't consciously draw it with partisan goals in mind, but interestingly both the House and Senate maps came out with a mild Dem bias. I'm unsure if this reflects unconscious assumptions I was making that benefited Democrats or if at that level Minnesota's geography does genuinely benefit Democrats.

State House: https://davesredistricting.org/join/0e2ab64b-1647-4986-a3ff-ffd80cec5cbd, 73 Biden districts out of 134

State Senate: https://davesredistricting.org/join/78ca046a-8d34-4815-bbed-7695f434af4a, 35 Biden districts out of 67