Here’s what I call an ungerrymander that ends up benefitting the DFL. The metro seats get compacted and the map turns into a four metro/four Greater MN map. The new MN-6 (grey) does contain a lot of the population within the metro so it could be classified as both. This map should eliminate John Kline and it also doesn’t hurt Paulsen too much but his district is now in better position to slip from underneath him over the decade. If Bachmann runs, which seems likely if she doesn’t become the Presidential nominee, this map probably would result in a 4/4 female/male delegation and 6/2 DFL/GOP. If state sen. Bonoff runs and beats Paulsen, 5/3 female/male and 7/1 DFL.
MN-1 Blue
Tim Walz (DFL)
52/45.5 (51/47)
Get’s a little more safe for Walz and if he can survive 2010 against a tier 1.5 opponent, then he should be fine.
MN-7 Orange
Collin Peterson (DFL)
48/50 (47/50)
Good thing he owns a plane. And a point more safe to boot by trading central MN counties and going from border to border.
MN-8 Purple
OPEN
56/43 (53/45)
Rep. Cravaack’s exurban areas of Isanti and Chisago Counties are given to the new MN-6 which is more favorable for the GOP but also is where Bachmann could run. These two counties get swapped out for the city of St. Cloud so now former state sen. and MN-6 2010 loser, Tarryl Clark, can run here. If it were Clark vs Cravaack, she’ll annihilate him.
MN-6 Grey
Rep. Cravaack
40/58 (45/53)
This becomes a Republican vote sink for the state and combines all the exurban and heavily conservative rural territory surrounding the Twin Cities. Cravaack could win, but if Bachmann wants to run for a seat, she’ll run here and she will win.
MN-2 Cyan
Rep. Kline
52/46 (48/50)
Kline’s seat loses all of it’s exurban and rural territory as it becomes a strictly south metro district, making this seat 8% more DFL. He is much more in line with Bachmann than with Paulsen so he has the wrong profile for this district. And state sen. Katie Sieben has been widely talked about moving up someday as she’s only in her 30’s and represents a swing’ish state senate district.
MN-3 Green
Rep. Paulsen
53/46 (52/46)
Paulsen got off pretty lucky as his district needed to pick up more territory and the suburbs his district would then include are all GOP leaning. The district does border the city of Minneapolis now, so everything west of the city lines are included, which make the district 1% more in our favor. I could have swapped back in Bloomington and given Kline the Carver County suburbs, but this looks prettier and keeps the map more directional.
MN-5 Yellow
Rep. Ellison
72/26 (74/24)
District now is the city of Minneapolis and the north metro.
MN-4 Red
Rep. McCollum and Rep. Bachmann
63/35 (64/34)
Includes Bachmann’s home, but I highly doubt she’d run here as MN-6 is winnable and includes most of her old territory. The district loses some of it’s southern suburbs and shifts more into a St. Paul+NE metro district.
But overall it looks pretty realistic and I can live with it.
Very nice and blocky this map is. I like it. 🙂
Considering that the Republicans now hold the Minnesota House and Senate? (It’s crazy how such big DFL majorities evaporated in 2010, this was looking like a potential Dem gerrymander all the way)
Just not sure if the GOP legislature is going to like weakening one incumbent and combining two others. I love the blockiness of the map. If Dems held at least one branch of the legislature then this map would probably pass.
First and foremost is the fact that the swap in counties between the 1st and 7th is a glaring example of the Will Rogers Phenomenon. Incidentally, Will Rogers was my great great great great uncle. But the phenomenon basically is a strange case where when you remove a segment of a population from population A to population B, it raises the average of both populations. An example of this would be in the “Conservative” San Francisco residents moved to west Texas, it would make both San Francisco, and west Texas more liberal. In the case of the 1st and 7th, by moving SW Minnesota to the 7th from the first, you make both the 1st and 7th more DFL. Interesting anomaly (and one that I had suspected when I was fiddling with maps, although I never crunched the numbers)
Second, this map won’t ever happen with Republicans in the legislature, but it is a good map to study and banter about.
3rd, Clark would be the favorite in this district… if she had a snowball’s chance in hell at getting out of a primary. An Iron Range DFLer would absolutely smash her in a primary, especially if it is someone as high profile as Yvonne Prettner-Solon, as she is rumored to be interested in the seat.
4th, I said this above, but I will say it again: Spilling Anoka county 4 ways? yuck. I understand the need to balance population, but you can draw the lines much cleaner with respect to county lines there, but keeping either the 3rd or 5th completely within Hennepin County, that would clean up your metro map a lot. Also, I know Hennepin needs to be split, as it has about 1.75 districts in the county by population, but you also don’t need to split it four ways either. I am not sure what you were really trying to accomplish with this that couldn’t be accomplished more cleanly.
BUT, if Gov. Dayton keeps vetoing the map, would the courts draw something like this?