Keith Ellison to be challenged again by racist

Lynne Torgerson has an announcement:

I, Lynne Torgerson, am running for Congress in Minnesota, against radical Islamist Keith Ellison. Keith Ellison fails to oppose banning Islamic Sharia law in the United States. He accuses people of trying to ban it as ‘conspiratorilists.’ Keith Ellison also fails to support that the United States Constitution should be supreme over Islamic Sharia law.

Sharia is taking over America, but Lynne Torgerson will stop it by losing to Keith Ellison by 70 points. Or something.

But that's not all:

Considering herself a "stateswoman" rather than a "politician," Torgerson’s platform has chiefly been comprised of her suspicion of Islam.

She considers herself a stateswoman though, so there's that. There's also this:

Torgerson insists that she is "very tolerant," blaming Muslims for failing "to become tolerant of us." Yet, when the Independent Party explained to her "that a winning campaign would need to incorporate a platform of equality and inclusion," she reportedly replied, to the effect, "Well I don’t support those ideas."

Oh she's a stateswoman alright, if the state you're talking about is the Tea Party Nation.

Here's a link to contribute to Keith.

Redistricting Maps! Round Three - The Court Map, Outstate Edition

This is the second part of a post I started two weeks ago going over what I think will be the most likely outcome of the now court lead redistricting process. The first part went over past court precedent and some different Twin Cities district options.

As always, these maps are drawn using Dave's Redistricting App, a free and easy to use redistricting tool.

This was the final version of the Twin Cities that I arrived at in the previous post:



Now let's see what happens to the rest of the map, first up, CD1:

KSTP poll: It's all in the question

That pretty much sums up my feelings about this poll. Only I might add a WTF, or something similar, but I'm a bit more uncouth than Aaron is.

KSTP, as they are wont to do, asked a couple different questions about the budget, but none of them really got to the point; who's budget do you favor the Governor's or the GOP Legislature's.

Not only that, they asked completely different questions from the survey that they did at the end of May, only one month ago, meaning we can't even really compare the two surveys.

SurveyUSA (6/20, no trendlines):

Going forward, should Minnesota's government increase spending? Decrease spending? Or continue to spend about the same amount as it has been?

Increase 8
Decrease 60
About The Same 27
Not Sure 5
(MoE: ±4.1%)

Pawlenty Polling Roundup

The last time I posted something about Tim Pawlenty, it was to look at the disconnect between how he was polling and how he was being talked up by the media. That was back in March.

Not much had really changed since then, the pundits were still treating him like a front runner and the polls still disagreed. But in the past week or so he has officially announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination for President and for the first time he's posted some decent polling numbers. Since I haven't covered any of these polls yet, I'm going to throw them all into one big Pawlenty polls post.

Are you ready for the T-Pawmentum?

PPP (6/2, GOP primary voters, 5/10 in parenthesis):

Mitt Romney: 16 (18)
Sarah Palin: 16 (12)
Tim Pawlenty: 13 (5)
Herman Cain: 12
Michele Bachmann: 9 (7)
Ron Paul: 9 (8)
Newt Gingrich: 9 (13)
Jon Huntsman: 4
Someone else/Undecided: 12 (11)
(MoE: ±4.1%)

Redistricting Maps! Round Three - The Court Map, Twin Cities Edition

The legislative session has now ended and with no deal on redistricting reached the job of drawing new district lines will go to the courts (they could work something out in a special session, but if you think that's going to happen, I've got a bridge to sell you). To that end the Chief Justice of the Minnsota Supreme Court has already appointed a panel of five judges to oversee the proceedings.

Unlike maps drawn by the legislature, the courts will not look at or use things like incumbent residency or partisan performance. Instead, if 2001 is any guide, the court will draw a map that's fairly similar to the one we have right now.

To try and figure out how the new map will be drawn, I'm first going to look at how the court decided to draw the lines in 2001 and use those same criteria for the current census data. Of course these judges are not the same ones who oversaw this process in 2001 and there's no telling how they'll rule this time around, but I suspect the final result will be similar.

From the 2001 court ruling:

Accordingly, approximately 53.7% of Minnesota's population now lives in the seven-county metro area, and 58.3% of the state's population lives in the eleven-county metropolitan statistical area. Adding the portions of St. Cloud sitting in Stearns and Benton Counties to this total, 59.4%, or closer to five-eighths than one-half, of the state's population lives in the urban and suburban areas reaching from southeastern Dakota County to St. Cloud.

Given that Minnesota has eight congressional seats, these statistics indicate that five of the eight districts should lie in this urban/suburban area, while three of the eight districts should lie in Greater Minnesota.

A-Klo crushes

No real analysis needed here, simply put, unless Amy Klobuchar gets caught sending a tweet of little Amy to a high school kid, she's a virtual lock for re-election.

PPP (6/2, 12/7 in parenthesis):

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 54 (53)
Tim Pawlenty (R) 41 (43)
Undecided 5 (4)

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 57 (56)
Michele Bachmann (R) 37 (39)
Undecided 5 (4)

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 57
Chris Barden (R) 30
Undecided 13

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 56
Dan Severson (R) 28
Undecided 16

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 55
Dave Thompson (R) 28
Undecided 17
(MoE: ±2.9%)

Redistricting: Judicial Board Appointed

The Chief Justice of the MN Supreme Court, Lorie Gildea, yesterday announced the starting lineup for the court in the coming redistricting battle. The panel she appointed is a diverse group consisting of; three men and two women, three urban/suburban and two rural members and a lot of different in legal backgrounds.

The five justices are (with the Governor who appointed them in parenthesis):

Wilhelmina Wright (Ventura) presiding judge
Ivy Bernhardson (Pawlenty)
James Florey (Carlson)
Edward Lynch (Perpich)
John Rodenberg (Ventura)

If you're wondering why Gildea is already appointing a redistricting panel when there's still the possibility that new district lines could get worked out during a special session here's your answer:

Although future agreement on redistricting legislation by the legislative and executive branches remains a possibility, in light of the significant duties and responsibilities to be undertaken by the panel and the requirement for completion of redistricting in time for the 2012 election cycle, appointment of a redistricting panel is now necessary and appropriate.

So than, let's find out a little bit more about who these judges are.

Unpacking the rest of the PPP poll

Yesterday I went over the questions in the recent PPP poll concerning the Marriage Discrimination Amendment, today I'm going to look at the numbers on Governor Dayton and the Legislature.

PPP (6/1, no trendlines):

"Do you approve or disapprove of Governor Mark Dayton’s job performance?"

Approve 51
Disapprove 38
Not sure 10
(MoE: ±2.9%)

As Tom Jensen points out in his analysis of the polling info:

The buyer's remorse about the results of last year's Gubernatorial elections that we've found in midwestern states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania appears to be a Republican only phenomenon. Mark Dayton has a very solid 51/38 approval rating with more GOP voters (12%) happy with the job he's doing than Democrats (6%) who are unhappy. Independents think he's doing a good job by a 48/39 spread as well.

John Kasich in Ohio (33/56), Rick Snyder in Michigan (33/50), Terry Branstad in Iowa (41/45) and Scott Walker in Wisconsin (43/54) all have underwater approval spreads according to PPP's results. Yet Mark Dayton, dealing with a larger budget deficit issue than any of the aforementioned Governor's is comfortably in positive territory.

PPP splits the difference

This is the third poll in the last three weeks that has asked Minnesotan's about the Marriage Discrimination Amendment. The first, the StarTribune's Minnesota Poll, showed Minnesotan's opposed to the amendment 55-39, the second, from SurveyUSA, showed Minnesotan's in favor 51-40 (51-48 if the "not vote on the measure" group is applied to the oppose column).

If you do some simple math and average those results you get 47.5% opposed to the amendment and 45% in favor, which is almost exactly the results that PPP got in their new poll.

PPP (6/1, no trendlines):

"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 46
No 47
Not sure 7
(MoE: ±2.9%)

So even though these three polls are all over the map, there is some consistency in their inconsistency.

SurveyUSA polls the Marriage Discrimination Amendment

SurveyUSA 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.

Redistricting Maps! Round Two - The GOP Gerrymanders

It'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:

CD1: 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?

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.

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

The 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.

The Tea Party Protection Plan

The 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.

The Sarahmander

The 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.