MN has a fair shot at either keeping its 8 seats or it may lose a seat, which only means more fun for me as I get to ponder up new maps for any and all combinations. If you’ve been following this blog religiously so far this year, you’ve seen me post redistrictings here, here, and here. The first two kind of suck as I did the work for them before Dave’s app and before I really knew how Democratic the suburbs had become, and the third traded in what was actually possible for what was the dream scenario in redistricting and gerrymandering.
This map would hopefully produce a 7-0 map. Clark is given a much more swing district to run in, Kline is combined with Paulsen, and Bachmann is combined with McCollum. However, the map could end up resulting in a 4-3 GOP majority if we didnt have the incumbents already set in 5/7 of the districts. But this isn’t any different than the current map, Gore and Kerry won 3 of my districts and they also only won 3 of the current districts. But MN has quite an overall Dem lean so even when the margins are against us, we still do much better at the local level do to our history of being progressive and populist.
On to the map!
map with county line here
MN-1 Rep. Walz
50-47 Obama
The district doesn’t change much at all. It comes in much closer to the Twin Cities now, and it takes in a bit more Republican areas, makes room for MN-7 to take in some Democratic areas there.
MN-2 OPEN
50/48 McCain
This is mainly the old MN-6 with a giant chunk of MN-3. It cuts out everything west of St. Cloud save for St. John’s University. It nows takes in the northern half of Hennepin county starting at the Minneapolis border. It now takes all of the blue portions of Anoka county while still taking in some 2-1 McCain exurbs. Most of these areas have been trending blue as lower income moves from the city in search of better schools, and the suburbs are too expensive while the exurbs provide a cheap housing market. By 2012 rolled around, I wouldnt be surprised if the district voted for Obama.
What I think makes Clark have a great shot is that I see there being two competitors who would hop into this race against her, two in state house leadership, Kurt Zellers and Tom Emmer. Emmer is from tea-bagger country, Zellers is from the suburbs, which would set-up a nasty primary. The tea-bag country would dominate in numbers for the GOP endorsement but in the general, there is enough moderate-Dem territory to knock out a tea-bagger unlike the current MN-6.
MN-3 Rep. Paulsen and Rep. Kline
52/46
This district goes from being a western suburban district to a southern one. It unfortunately doesn’t get any more Democratic; if it were an 8 seat map I’d be able to work something out quite favorable to us but there is still GOP leaning areas that need to get spread out.
Id hope a primary between Kline and Paulsen would allow a DFL candidate to save up their money and make a go at this seat. The DFL does have a commanding majority in state legislature seats so we should be able to find a solid candidate
MN-4 Rep. McCollum
60-38 Obama
Has to expand a bit to pick-up population so I threw Bachmann in with McCollum to eliminate that hot mess. It does expand up into the exurbs a little bit, but the district really doesn’t change much at all.
MN-5 Rep. Ellison
69-29 Obama
This district changes a bit in that the current district is Minneapolis and then just expand outwards in all directions until it has enough population. To save as many inner suburbs for MN2&3 to boost their Dems, this district heads directly west which makes it both urban, suburban, and also a little bit exurban.