Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Redistricting Maps! Round Five - The Parties' Proposals, Outstate edition

Redistricting MinnesotaFriday of last week was the deadline for parties in Minnesota's redistricting lawsuit to submit their maps. Three groups submitted maps; the Britton, Hippert (GOP) and Martin (DFL) intervenors. On Monday I went over the partisan composition of the three maps and yesterday I went over the five metro area districts. Today I'm going to discuss the way the three outstate districts were drawn.

Before I get into the maps I'll once again recap the partisan numbers with this nifty color coded excel table.

ave Dem% diff

This is a table of the differences in the average Democratic vote %, color coded so that the districts that get the most Republican are redder and the ones that get the most Democratic are bluer.

With that, on to the last of the maps!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Redistricting Maps! Round Five - The Parties' Proposals, Metro edition

Redistricting MinnesotaYesterday I posted the partisan numbers of the proposed districts, today I'm going to look at the districts themselves, starting today in the metro and going outstate tomorrow.

Before I get into that I just wanted to recap the numbers from yesterday in the form of a color coded excel table!

ave Dem% diff

This is a table of the differences in the average Democratic vote %, color coded so that the districts that get the most Republican are redder and the ones that get the most Democratic are bluer.

With that, on to the maps!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Redistricting: Partisan numbers for proposed maps

Redistricting MinnesotaI tried to resist the urge to break this up into multiple posts and instead just do one big post comparing all the proposals. That post quickly grew to unmanageable proportions though, so I'm going to go ahead and break it up anyway.

So, today I'm going to go over the partisan numbers of the proposed districts and tomorrow I'll start breaking down the districts themselves.

The three proposals are from the Britton, Hippert (GOP) and Martin (DFL) intervenors. The Hippert map is old news, as it is the same map that passed through the GOP controlled legislature earlier this year and was vetoed by Governor Dayton. The two other maps are interesting in their similarities and their differences; drawing rural Minnesota almost exactly the same but taking completely different approaches in the metro area.

Cutting to the chase though; here are the Obama percentages for the three maps:

Obama % for proposed maps
CD Britton Hippert Martin Old
1 52% 51% 52% 51%
2 45% 49% 45% 48%
3 50% 50% 55% 52%
4 64% 64% 62% 64%
5 72% 74% 73% 74%
6 48% 45% 43% 45%
7 47% 45% 48% 47%
8 53% 56% 54% 53%

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Yet another poll on the anti-family amendment

MNPrideAround this time each year St. Cloud State University does a statewide poll and this years version featured a question about the anti-family amendment.

SCSU (11/12, no trend lines):
"Should the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one
woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?"

Yes 44
No 47
Don't know/refused 9
(MoE: ±5%)

This result runs contrary to the two polls from last week, by the Star Tribune (PSRA) and KSTP (SurveyUSA), who both found outside the margin of error leads for the amendment. And other than a PPP poll at the end of May that showed the amendment losing by a single point this is the only poll with the "one man, one woman" language to show the amendment losing outright.

If we simply average the three latest polls we get this; 43% do not support the amendment and 46% do. This leaves 10-11% in the undecided/don't know category. It's that 10% who will decide the fate of the amendment.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

A-Klo cruising

Amy KlobucharIn addition to testing the anti-family amendment and the Vikings stadium SurveyUSA also tested the 2012 Senate race and to absolutely no one's surprise Amy Klobuchar has wide leads over her announced opposition, Dan/Doc Severson and first term city councilman Joe Arwood.

SurveyUSA (11/8, no trendlines):
Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 49
Tim Pawlenty (R) 37
Undecided 14

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 50
Norm Coleman (R) 37
Undecided 14

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 55
Dan Severson (R) 23
Undecided 22

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 56
Joe Arwood (R) 22
Undecided 22
(MoE: ±4.3%)

I might as well just write up a template for all these A-Klo poll posts, because they've all been the same so far. Amy Klobuchar is polling well over 50% against her announced opponents and is polling at 50% against the MN GOP's A-team, who can't even crack 40% against her.

You can see why she does so well by looking at the cross-tabs, she loses at most 7% of Democrats, while taking 17% of Republicans against the known names and 28% against the unknowns. And there is simply nothing in any of these numbers that indicate any vulnerability for the GOP to exploit.

The only real question I have about this race is weather A-Klo can actually do better than the 58% she got in 2006.

Another poll shows the anti-family amendment winning

Gay MarriageOn Tuesday I posted about the Minnesota Poll and it's findings vis-a-vie the anti-family amendment, which were discouraging to say the least. Right on the heels of that comes a SurveyUSA poll showing basically the same result, Minnesota voters favoring the amendment by a handful of points.

SurveyUSA (11/8, 5/25 in parenthesis, 3/31 in brackets):
"If an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution were on the ballot, that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, would you vote..."

For 46 (51) [62]
Against 40 (40) [33]
Not vote 10 (8)
Not sure 4 (2) [5]
(MoE: ±4.3%)

This somewhat mirror's the Strib's 48-43 result in favor of the amendment. The big difference though is that SurveyUSA gave people the "not vote" option, of which 10% availed themselves.

If people actually voted this way next November the amendment would fail. This is because for an amendment to the Minnesota constitution to pass it needs to receive 50% + 1 of the entire electorate. Meaning not voting on the measure is as good as voting no.

The other thing you can see is that actual support for the amendment has eroded quite a bit since SurveyUSA's first poll of the issue at the end of March, going from 62% support, to 51% to 46% now. Opposition to the amendment hasn't risen at the same level as support has fallen, meaning that many people who at first supported the amendment have moved into the "Not vote" and "Not sure" categories.

Like in the Minnesota poll though, there are a substantial number of Democrats, 26% in this case, who are in favor of the amendment while only 58% are opposed. This will simply not do if we want to beat this thing.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Minnesota Poll: the anti-family amendment makes big gains

MNPrideThere's no way to really sugar coat this one, since last time PSRA was in the field in Minnesota opposition to the anti-family amendment has softened by twelve points and support has increased by nine.

StarTribune (PSRA) (11/8, 5/13 in parenthesis):
"Would you favor or oppose amending the Minnesota Constitution to allow marriage only between a man and a woman?"

Favor 48 (39)
Oppose 43 (55)
Don't know/refused 8 (7)
(MoE: ±4.4%)

It's hard to say exactly what happened since May that would result in opposition going from plus sixteen points to minus five, but this certainly helps to illustrate the uncertainties of polling ballot questions, especially this particular ballot question.

[Note: I missed it at first, but the question wording is different from the May poll to this one and that is almost certainly what is driving the results.]

Looking at the cross-tabs the changes come from some expected and some unexpected places. Back in May the 65+ cohort actually opposed the amendment, 51-44, now that same group is in favor of the amendment 70-26. This is a preposterously large swing and may be the root of the dramatic topline swing.

Redistricting: Special panel releases redistricting principals

Redistricting MinnesotaIn an order filed on Friday the Special Redistricting Panel released it's redistricting principals. These are the criteria the court will use to actually draw the maps we will be using for the next ten years.

In this post I'm going to look at the principals in the court order and how they compare to the principals from the last redistricting cycle and also the principals submitted by the four intervenors.

First, lets take a look at the principals and what they actually mean before looking at how the different parties put them in order.