Nobles County, Minnesota: A sign of racial voting?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Nobles is a county in southwestern Minnesota, right to the east of Rock. I dislike the county for a bad run in with the police I had there, but that's not really the issue. The issue is the county's crazy voting patterns. In 2004 it voted 56% for Bush. But look at the results last year:

Senate:
Independence    ROBERT FITZGERALD    254   3.37   
Republican    MARK KENNEDY    3531   46.88   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    AMY KLOBUCHAR    3697   49.08

House:
Republican    GIL GUTKNECHT    3703   49.10   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    TIM WALZ    3830   50.78

Governor/Lt. Governor:
Independence    PETER HUTCHINSON AND MAUREEN REED    263   3.49   
Republican    TIM PAWLENTY AND CAROL MOLNAU    3692   48.93   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    MIKE HATCH AND JUDI DUTCHER    3475   46.05

Secretary of State:
Independence    JOEL SPOONHEIM    151   2.03   
Republican    MARY KIFFMEYER    3608   48.59   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    MARK RITCHIE    3246   43.72   
For Independent Voters    BRUCE KENNEDY    418   5.63

Auditor:
Independence    LUCY GEROLD    312   4.26   
Republican    PATRICIA ANDERSON    3427   46.82   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    REBECCA OTTO    3434   46.92   
Green    DAVE BERGER    143   1.95   

Attorney General:
Independence    JOHN JAMES    294   3.99   
Republican    JEFF JOHNSON    3251   44.14   
Democratic-Farmer-Labor    LORI SWANSON    3742   50.81

Klobuchar received less than 50%, and only won by less than 3 points. Most such counties are usually solidly Republican. However, Walz carried it. It's the only county in the district he outperformed Klobuchar in, except his home here, Blue Earth and Nicollet, where the reason is obvious. Furthermore Pawlenty received under 50%. He did far better in many counties where Klobuchar did far better. The voting on a whole is quite polarized, yet it voted much better for Sec of State Kiffmeyer in a race she lost, then in 2002 when she won and lost Nobles by 9 points.

Is this a sign of racial voting? Nobles is over 10% Hispanic, and was recently the site of a much criticized raid by INS at illegals working at a meat packing plant. I wonder if as a result of this, the vote is polarized, or if Gutknecht and Pawlenty's race-baiting on the issue significantly hurt them. Does this look like that's the pattern there, that racial tensions polarized the voting?

BTW, it voted for McGovern in 1972. Go figure.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

Minnesota has no nonwhites, prude

[Alcon]

Over 10% Hispanic?  That means at least 6-8% of the voting population must be Hispanic, and at least 2-3% must be Republican Hispanics...not much.  I doubt that this mattered all that much.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Over 10% Hispanic?  That means at least 6-8% of the voting population must be Hispanic, and at least 2-3% must be Republican Hispanics...not much.  I doubt that this mattered all that much.

It's over 11% actually. Those numbers are enough to make up the Gutknecht/Kennedy difference. The point of racial voting though is if it polarized Republican whites enough to always vote straight ticket.

Not the most Hispanic county in Minnesota though. Watonwan is 15% Hispanic and the results there are also fairly polarized, although not quite as much. Walz won it running 3 points behind Klobuchar and Pawlenty ran 8 points ahead of Kennedy.

perhaps the best measure there though is the State Auditor race, which the Republican won by 4 votes, a basic tie. I'll how that race ran to the Senate one in the district at large.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

OK, did some excel calculations.

Walz won by about 5.6 points. Otto (State Auditor winner) won the district by about 2.6 points. Klobuchar won by 14.4 points.

Walz won Watonwan by about 2.6 points and Klobuchar did by 13.5. So Klobuchar actually overperformed, but otherwise the swing is fairly even there. Pawlenty won it by less than 4 points though, and I'm sure that's worse than district wide.

Tabulated it now, Pawlenty won the district by about 5.2 points. So Hatch overperformed too. A sign of polarization, but not as great as Nobles.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Actually, here's another interesting angle. I discovered these odd demographics for a small Watonwan town called Butterfield:

Races in Butterfield:

    * White Non-Hispanic (76.4%)
    * Hispanic (15.1%)
    * Other Asian (7.1%)
    * Other race (5.3%)
    * Two or more races (1.2%)
    * American Indian (0.9%)

"Other Asian" in Minnesota almost always means Hmong although I wonder why so many Hmong are in the town. It's the only such town in Watonwan, and the county is less than 1% Asian. Upon some research I see the "Other race" is simply Hispanics who don't identify as White.

However in Nobles:

Races in Nobles County:

    * White Non-Hispanic (82.7%)
    * Hispanic (11.2%)
    * Other race (6.6%)
    * Other Asian (2.6%)
    * Two or more races (1.4%)
    * Black (1.1%)
    * Vietnamese (0.9%)
    * American Indian (0.6%)

The Hmong population there is not insignifiant.

Also check out Worthington (county seat, where almost all the non-whites are located, and where I had my run-in with the cops):

Races in Worthington:

    * White Non-Hispanic (70.3%)
    * Hispanic (19.3%)
    * Other race (11.5%)
    * Other Asian (4.6%)
    * Two or more races (2.1%)
    * Black (1.9%)
    * Vietnamese (1.6%)
    * American Indian (0.8%)

Clearly Worthington has a significant population of Hmong. So the racial voting goes further than Hispanics.

As far as I know though, few Hmong have set up communities outside the Twin Cities, and even if some were set up in Worthington and Butterfield, I wonder why Butterfield is the only such town in Watonwan. Uber-Republican Mountain Lake in neighboring Cottonwood County appears to have a significant Hmong population toom (as well as Hispanics).

The results in Butterfield are kind of strange too. Klobuchar won by 5 votes (out of 204) and the House race was literally a complete tie. Everything else was Republican, and except for the AGship (the biggest Democratic landslide of the rest), in a landslide. So the factor of Walz overperforming is still there.

[Ban my account ffs!]

You want to see racial voting in Minnesota, look at HD 2B... Brita Sailer.

She unseated the Republican incumbent (Doug Lindgren) in 2004 and he challenged her again in 2006 and lost by like a 5 point margin.

But the southern part of Clearwater county and central Clearwater county which are overwhelmingly white, including the city of Bagley, Lindgren did better than Sailer, but Sailer captured over 90% of the Native American vote in the northern part of the district which pushed her over the threshold.

Since the white population of the county is stable to falling, and the Native American population is increasing, it is likely to stay in DFL hands for some time to come (until redistricting, anyway).

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Wow, I just looked at Bagley, and Lindgren won with almost 57%. But every other Democrat won there, even Hatch won it by over 10 points.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I should also mention that Doug Lindgren was a perfect example of race baiting in this election.  A man was caught fishing in Red Lake reservation waters, about 2 miles past the reservation line.

The reservation officials confiscated his boat and the man sued, saying that the state had jurisdiction on the waters because of two supreme court cases in the early 20th century and that Red Lake would have to give up their rights to the lake and give it to the state of Minnesota.

The Republicans bit and pushed this out as a big election issue.  Doug Lindgren as well as Michael Barrett (you know... the sacrificial lamb that the GOP threw out there to run against Collin Peterson)...
Barrett got only 30% of the vote, but Lindgren played on the racism of white people in the district.

Needless to say Rod Skoe, the state senator from district 2 (DFL) was actually helped by this race baiting as the whole of district 2 covers most of the Red Lake reservation as well as areas near Bemidji which tend to favor the DFL.

While the GOP candidate for district 4B, which includes Bemidji and areas eastward did not make the Red Lake issue an issue at all and actually decried it, it hurt him.  He finished with only 30% of the vote.  It very readily backfired.  It also hurt District 4 GOP senator Carrie Ruud who lost to DFLer Mary Olson by a bigger margin than expected.

With the exception of District 4a, where the incumbent Republican narrowly beat the unknown challenger, the entire northern 3rd of Minnesota is now in DFL hands.  It has become clear to us that the GOP is the party of racist and divisive politics, and is entirely too suburban centered for our taste.

[memphis]

What a joke. Check out the South for serious racial voting. In most Mississippi counties, the percents for Kerry and Bush were almost exactly the same as the Census numbers for black and white respectively.

[Alcon]

What a joke. Check out the South for serious racial voting. In most Mississippi counties, the percents for Kerry and Bush were almost exactly the same as the Census numbers for black and white respectively.

I'm still amazed by some of the Mississippi results - a two-precinct town will have one 94% Kerry black precinct, and one 90% Bush white precinct.  That's crazy.

[Ban my account ffs!]

That's not crazy, that's just sad.  Doesn't seem like a nice place to raise a family.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Kerry actually won whites in Minnesota.

He didn't in New York, New Jersey, California or Illinois.

Kerry probably won at least 63% of whites in the precinct in my favorite part of town (blight, drugs and ALCOHOL ALCOHOL ALCOHOL!)

[Alcon]

Kerry actually won whites in Minnesota.

He didn't in New York, New Jersey, California or Illinois.

Quoth CNN exit polling.

Kerry probably won at least 63% of whites in the precinct in my favorite part of town (blight, drugs and ALCOHOL ALCOHOL ALCOHOL!)

He probably did better in my precinct, full of none of the three.