Friday, May 27, 2011

SurveyUSA polls the Marriage Discrimination Amendment

PhotobucketSurveyUSA had their polling robots calling Minnesotan's on the 23rd and 24th, the robots came back with these results.

KSTP (SurveyUSA) (5/25, 3/31 in parenthesis):
"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 the amendment 51 (62)
Against the amendment 40 (33)
Not vote on the measure 8
Not sure 2 (5)
(MoE: ±4.3%)

While the topline numbers are not great, the trendlines are. In just a couple months the For side has gone from a +29 spread to a +11 spread, an incredible 18 point drop. Additionally, if you add the "Not vote on the measure" group to the Against group (since not voting on the amendment is just as good as a no) it gets narrowed down to a 3 point advantage.

So even though the top line numbers of this poll look ugly, I would make that case that it's actually good news. The problem for supporters of the amendment is that people will vote on it a year and a half from now and the thing that helps our side the most is time.

To illustrate that point here's the breakdown by age (For/Against):

65+ 66/27
50-64 52/40
35-49 51/37
18-34 42/50

The more old people who stop voting and the more young people who grow into voting age the more support our side has. It's that simple.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Redistricting Maps! Round Two - The GOP Gerrymanders

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usIt's time for round two of Redistricting Maps! In this edition we'll look at some possible GOP gerrymanders, including the much talked about idea of combining Minneapolis and St. Paul into one district, in the previous edition we looked at some possible DFL gerymanders.

Before we get started, here's the Obama share of the vote in the eight congressional districts as they are currently drawn:

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usCD1: 51%
CD2: 48%
CD3: 52%
CD4: 64%
CD5: 74%
CD6: 45%
CD7: 47%
CD8: 53%

As you can see, the current map is pretty favorable to the GOP. There are already two districts packed with Democrats and the remaining districts are all within reach with the right candidate in the right cycle, as Chip Cravaack proved in November.

Is there a way to make an even more favorable GOP map though?

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

The following video features Rep. Sarah Anderson getting a tad bit upset when someone (Pat Hentges, the Mankato City Manager) dares to call her redistricting plan a gerrymander. She then gets upset at those in attendance for cheering on one of her DFL colleagues (Melissa Hortman) and then gets upset with said colleague.



Sarah Anderson want's to make sure everyone knows that the redistricting plan she authored is super fair and not a gerrymander at all. Really. For super serious. Definitely not a gerrymander. Why would you even suggest that? Don't you know how awful it makes Sarah feel when you call her redistricting plan a big fat gerrymander?

Cause it's totally not a gerrymander:

Let's take a quick look at one aspect of the plan, the incumbents who would get drawn together. If this was truly a "fair" plan we would expect the instances of incumbents getting drawn together to breakdown roughly evenly between the types of match-ups. Is this what happens?

Incumbent match-ups in house GOP plan
GOP vs GOP: 1
DFL vs DFL: 7
DFL vs GOP: 5

All but one of the incumbent pairings includes a DFLer and the majority are DFL on DFL. Essentially what was done with the map was to draw first ring suburban DFLers into seats with outer ring suburban DFLers and GOPers while at the same time creating a bunch of suburban open seats ripe for GOP pickups.

Some further context; there are a total of 109 Republicans in the Minnesota legislature and 92 Democrats. That means 21% of the DFL caucus would get drawn into a district with another incumbent while a whooping 6% of GOPers would suffer the same fate.

But that totally happened by chance and was not at all part of an effort to draw DFLers into districts with each other. Seriously. Why doesn't anyone believe Sarah Anderson when she insists that her plan is most certainly not a gerrymander.

Monday, May 16, 2011

The Minnesota Poll throws everything at the wall, some it of sticks

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usThe StarTribune spent last week and weekend doing a slow release of information from their Minnesota Poll, with some of the numbers providing a bit of a surprise. Let's dive right in starting in chronological order of when the Strib released the individual numbers.

StarTribune (PSRA) (5/9, no trend lines):
"Do you think Native American tribes should continue to have exclusive rights to operate casino gambling facilities in Minnesota, or do you think gambling should be opened up to others?"

Should be opened up to others 72
Tribes should have exclusive rights 23
Don't know/refused 5

"If the gambling is expanded, which one of the following would you most prefer? The choices are:"

Allowing video slot machines at Canterbury Park and Running Aces racetracks 20
A casino in downtown Minneapolis 12
A casino at the mall of America 8
Allowing video slot machines in bars and restaurants 8
Would you prefer to see gambling expanded in all of these areas? 37
None/oppose all (volunteered) 11
Don't know/refused 4
(MoE: ±4.7%)

The fact that 72% of respondents don't like the tribal exclusive on gambling might be the least surprising result of the entire poll. There is some genuine opposition to gambling expansion, but not all of that opposition is from the tribal rights point of view so when the expansion question is framed this way it's not surprising to see results like this.

The follow-up though confirms that there is not insignificant support for an overall expansion of gambling, a plurality, 37% want to see gambling opened up in all areas. You can probably think of the Downtown Casino and Mall of America Casino answers as supporting essentially the same idea, so that group is about 20% and another 20% for the Racino's.

Feel free to add the 37% who support all forms of gambling expansion to both the Twin Cities Casino or the Racino's support numbers to come up with well over 50% in favor of both proposals with only 11% firmly against any expansion.

This should be a no-brainer for the legislature, but considering the blow-up happening in the GOP over gambling right now, who knows what will come of it.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Tea Party Protection Plan

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usThe Minnesota House GOP's recently released congressional redistricting map, authored by Rep. Sarah Anderson, is a rather devious little gerrymander. It solves the "Peterson problem" for the GOP in a creative way, handing him a more liberal district than even Jim Oberstar had while at the same time drawing Chip Cravaack a considerably more conservative district than the one he is currently Representing.

Additionally Michele Bachmann's CD6 remains largely intact and Eric Paulson's CD3 gets slightly more red. The surprise is that the House Education Committee Chairman, Rep. John Kline, doesn't get any help, in fact his CD2 gets slightly more blue. On the DFL side CDs 1, 4 and 5 don't change much at all in terms of partisans.

Here's what the Obama percentages in the districts would look like under the Anderson plan (current Obama percentages in parenthesis) [this information was obtained by plotting the Anderson map in Dave's Redistricting App which does not go down to the block level, so these numbers are not exact, they are however close enough for this analysis]:

CD1: 51% (51%)
CD2: 49% (48%)
CD3: 50% (52%)
CD4: 64% (64%)
CD5: 74% (74%)
CD6: 45% (45%)
CD7: 45% (47%)
CD8: 56% (53%)

As I alluded to in the first paragraph, the main thrust of this plan is to solve the "Peterson problem" for the GOP. What is the "Peterson problem" you ask? Let me explain.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Sarahmander

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usThe GOP House redistricting plan authored by Rep. Sarah Anderson passed out of committee Tuesday on a party line vote. Despite this, the plan is fair, or so say's it's author:

[Rep.] Anderson characterized her propsal as a "fair plan" that is based on the population growth derived from the 2010 census.

Of course those responsible for drawing the map consider it to be "fair," but is it?

Let's take a quick look at one aspect of the plan, the incumbents who would get drawn together. If this was truly a "fair" plan we would expect the instances of incumbents getting drawn together to breakdown roughly evenly between the types of match-ups. Is this what happens?

Incumbent match-ups in house GOP plan
GOP vs GOP: 1
DFL vs DFL: 7
DFL vs GOP: 5

All but one of the incumbent pairings includes a DFLer and the majority are DFL on DFL. Essentially what was done with the map was to draw first ring suburban DFLers into seats with outer ring suburban DFLers and GOPers while at the same time creating a bunch of suburban open seats ripe for GOP pickups.