Random Story Roundup

It's Friday, you know what that means don't you? Partying, partying and fun, fun, fun.

I couldn't resist that one on April fools day.

Now that you're in the proper frame of mind, on to the random goodness!

• Politico reported earlier in the week that former Senator Norm Coleman wasn't too bullish on the GOPs chances of taking Amy Klobuchar's Senate seat.
  
  

  I think it could be a tough year. She’s certainly strong. She’s got good numbers and good support. She hasn’t been a very polarizing force. Clearly, that's going to be a challenge.

  
  Did I say "wasn't too bullish?" From an insider like Coleman the above quote is about as close as you're likely to get to "we don't have a snowballs chance in hell."
  
  
• In November Nancy Reagan announced that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, along with NBC and Politico, would host the first of the Republican Presidential nomination debates.
  
  Since than no one has actually announced they are running, at least no one anyone is taking seriously, leaving debate organizers in a dilemma, either they let the Bachmann's and Cain's of the GOP have the stage to themselves or they postpone the event until some actual candidates emerge.
  
  Not surprisingly they decided to postpone.
  
  

Updated hPVI by House district

I conclude the roll out of the 2011 hPVI's with the House edition. If you missed them or just want to go back and see them again, here are the county and Senate versions.

Some of this post may sound like a repeat of the Senate post from last week and that's because, as most of you know, House districts are nested within Senate districts, meaning any changes in the partisan makeup of the Senate districts has a direct effect on the makeup of the corresponding house districts.

This means that all of the same stuff applies that was discussed last week; the DFL leaning House districts are top heavy, and the GOP leaning districts are middle heavy. The DFL has almost thirty districts with a D+21 tilt or greater, while the GOP has only 20 such districts. The GOP, on the other hand, has 38 districts with leans between five and twenty while the DFL has only 15. For those of you not doing the math as we go; that's 58 R+5 and greater districts for the GOP, to only 44 D+5 and greater districts for the DFL.

Before we get too much further let's take a look at the seat graph:

Population Change by Senate District

Last week, with the release of the block level census data, I broke down how much each congressional district was going to have to adjust. For the state Senate districts I considered just posting a list with their deviation from ideal population, but that's not as cool as a map. Before the fun begins though, we'll need to go over some background info to help understand what these maps mean.

There are three maps below that I'm calling "rural," "burbs" and "cities." They are loosely grouped as follows; the rural districts that need to gain population, the suburban districts that need to lose population (some of which could be considered rural), and the city districts that need to gain population (some of which are suburban).

The maps are than labeled like this; first is the Senate district number, followed by the district's hPVI, and finishing with the districts deviation from ideal population size. Population numbers in black are overage, those in red with parenthesis are population underage. Said another way, districts with black numbers will need to shrink, and districts with red numbers will need to get larger.

Unlike US Congressional districts, Minnesota legislative districts don't have to have exactly equal populations between them, they only need to be equal within 10% of each other. This means that the district with the largest population can't have more than 10% of the population of the district with the smallest population.

Ideal district size therefore, is arrived at by taking the state population, 5,303,925 and dividing it by the number of Senate districts, 67. That comes to 79,163. With the 10% spread allowance that gives us population parameters of approximatively 75,000 on the low end and 83,000 on the high end. This means if a particular district is already within the +/- 4,000 range it doesn't have to change at all. Of course this doesn't mean it won't change.

Which brings us to the maps!

Updated hPVI by Senate district

Last week I began rolling out new hPVI's with the county edition, this week the Senate districts are up.

Way back in November of 2010 Nate Silver wrote an article about the recently concluded elections entitled "2010: An Aligning Election," where he laid out the case that the 2010 midterms were a correction of Democratic gains in Republican territory in 2006 and 2008.

The same case can be made about the 2010 Minnesota legislative elections.

Below is a graph of the Senate district hPVI's, those colored red are held by GOPers and those colored blue are held by DFLers.

The curious case of Tim Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty finds himself in an interesting place right now, a place where few have managed to emerge victorious. The pundacricy loves him, but the voters don't know who he is, and the one's who do know who he is don't really like him that much.

For instance, Larry Sabato, the political Svengali at the University of Virginia, tells us:

Pawlenty has a strong team. It is well respected and in some respects envied by the other candidates. It's really one of his hidden advantages. He's not a front-runner. He's relatively unknown. But because of his team he's well positioned. He could easily become one of the finalists for the Republican nomination.

The linked article mentions many of the members of his team, some coming from Bush's political team but others coming from Mitt Romney's failed campaign. One problem, if he has such a great team, how do you explain this?

Minnesota Census Data Released

The long wait is over, the Census bureau today released the comprehensive state level data for Minnesota. Right now I'm just going to go over the congressional numbers and will dive further into the weeds in later posts.

Way back in January I used 2009 estimates to breakdown how the districts will have to change. Now we have the real numbers. To refresh your memory, the total population of Minnesota was counted as 5,303,925 for an ideal district size of 662,991 (there will be three districts with one less person).

Here's the official Census populations of the districts [difference from ideal size]:

CD1: 644,787 [-18,204]
CD2: 732,515 [+69,524]
CD3: 650,185 [-12,806]
CD4: 614,624 [-48,367]
CD5: 616,482 [-46,509]
CD6: 759,478 [+96,487]
CD7: 625,512 [-37,479]
CD8: 660,342 [-2,649]

The biggest difference between these numbers and the ones I used in that January post are in CD's 3 and 8. It had looked like CD3 was going to be the closet district to ideal but it turned out to be CD8. In fact, looking at these numbers CD8 looks to be the district that will experience the least amount of change.

The numbers released today brought some of the districts closer to ideal than the estimates were expecting, CD's 1, 7 and 8, while the rest got further away. CD's 2 and 6 gained more than expected while CD's 3, 4 and 5 didn't grow as fast as estimated.

What this means is what everyone already knows, the Twin Cities and Western burbs are growing more slowly than the exurbs. The real news from these numbers though is that CD8 is less likely to be the point of contention that was previously expected.

Wisconsin Senate Recall Polls

DailyKos commissioned their polling partner, PPP, to poll the eight potential recall elections in Wisconsin. In all eight of the polls they matched the incumbant Republican with a "generic Democrat," so the number to pay attention to is the incumbents re-elect number.

PPP (3/14, no trend lines):

Dan Kapanke (R): 41
Generic Dem: 55

Randy Hopper (R): 44
Generic Dem: 49

Luther Olsen (R): 47
Generic Dem: 49

Rob Cowles (R): 45
Generic Dem: 43

Sheila Harsdorf (R): 48
Generic Dem: 44

Alberta Darling (R): 52
Generic Dem: 44

Mary Lazich (R): 56
Generic Dem: 34

Glenn Grothman (R): 60
Generic Dem: 32

No information yet on sample size and margin of error which will be posted tomorrow morning at DailyKos

Wisconsin Democrats need to win three of these seats to take back control of the Senate and what do you know, there are three incumbents trailing against a generic Democrat. Additionally two more incumbents are below 50% against a generic Democrat.

Before a recall election can happen though, Wisconsin Democrats have to collect the requisite number of signatures. In that regard things are looking good, as Chris Bowers at DailyKos posted about earlier today, with over three quarters of the time remaining Democrats claim to have almost 50% of the required signatures.

Of course the first 50% is easier than the second 50% and what's more Wisconsin Democrats will surely want to collect more than the bare minimum of signatures to guard against the inevitable legal challenges.

All of which means if you can donate any money or time to help your cheese-head neighbors next door, now's the time.

Updated hPVI by County

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be rolling out the new hPVIs, starting today with the counties and then moving on to the Senate and House districts. Because of redistricting the Senate and House hPVIs will be mostly irrelevant as soon as a new map is approved, but they will nonetheless provide some interesting information on partisan trends within the state.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about; hPVI is a bastardization of The Cook Political Reports PVI metric. PVI (which stands for partisan voting index) is simply the average margin of victory of a parties presidential candidate in a congressional district.

Here is the explanation from Cook's website:

A Partisan Voting Index score of D+2, for example, means that in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, that district performed an average of two points more Democratic than the nation did as a whole, while an R+4 means the district performed four points more Republican than the national average. If a district performed within half a point of the national average in either direction, we assign it a score of EVEN.

This Week in Redistricting 3/11

The big news this week is that Justin Morneau played baseball for the first time since July 7th, going 1-2 with a double in a spring training game.

There was some redistricting news as well.

• The Census Bureau is taking it's sweet time to release the detailed Minnesota population numbers, but the Strib reports that those numbers will finally come next week.
  
  
• A slew of big name former politico's, including Walter Mondale, have been making a push for an independent redistricting commission to take over the line drawing authority from the legislature. The idea is to create a panel of retired judges to draw the lines, thereby removing politics from the process, because, as we all know, judges don't have a political bone in their body and are always super objective and ultra knowledgeable about geography and regional communities.
  
  

  Under the proposal, each of the four legislative leaders in the House and Senate would select one member of the commission. Those four would then pick the fifth member. No prospective judge could have received party endorsement for a political position.
  
  If lawmakers reject their first map, the judges could draw second and third maps. Only after the Legislature turns down three maps could lawmakers draw new district lines on their own.

  
  So what's not to like about such an idea? Well, if you're Republican Party of Minnesota Deputy Chairman Michael Brodkorb, everything:
  
  

  The Minnesota Constitution clearly lays out a fair process and procedure for redistricting, and we are not interested in any process that takes away the constitutional responsibility of the Legislature and the courts. Elected representatives should be involved in the redistricting process, not an unelected panel of retired political appointees.

  
  It's not often that I will say this, but I agree with Brodkorb. As fraught with conflict of interest as having politicians draw the lines of their own districts is, often times the representative of a district knows more about where the lines should be drawn than some random judge or panel of judges.
  
  That's not to say that there isn't a redistricting commission approach that can work, I'm just not a huge fan of the retired judges model. Such a plan assumes that judges, for whatever reason, are the best qualified for such an assignment, which they are not. Additionally having the legislative leaders of the two parties select the judges to be on the panel only serves to inject politics right back into the equation.
  
  Such a commission, if one were to be formed, should certainly have citizen representatives as well as elected officials as it's members. If judges must be included than so be it, but a panel made up exclusively of judges is not very representative of the state as a whole.
  
  

This Week in Redistricting 2/11

Another week, another trickle of redistricting news, as we wait for the Census Bureau to release the detailed Minnesota numbers. Looking at that map I'm astounded by the precision of their estimates for data release.

So until we can really give Dave's redistricting app a serious workout, onto the link round-up!

• The House Redistricting Committee is going on a road trip and may be stopping at a town near you!
  
  First stop is today at 1pm in Marshall.
  
  
• Tom Scheck talked to a number of Minnesota Congresspersons about their feelings regarding redistricting. Not surprisingly, Betty McCollum doesn't seem to hip to the idea of drawing Minneapolis and St. Paul as one district.
  
  
• MNCentral takes a look at participation rates in the different districts, and how redistricting might change that.
  
  

This Week in Redistricting 1/28

It's been over a month since the last time I put up a TWIR, partly because not a lot has been happening on the redistricting front, but mainly because I've found myself in a bit of a post-election listlessness.

My interest in blogging about politics is strongly related to the proximity of the next election and I'm now firmly in the lethargy stage of of the current cycle where I am finding other, non-political, topics to be more interesting timesinks.

So now that my preamble has gotten you super excited to read this post, on with it!

• The big news is that the lawsuits have begun. The first one was filed on the 12th of January with the plaintiffs all being Democrats. This was followed by a similar lawsuit filed by Republicans.
  
  None of this is surprising and in fact is expected. Since the requirement to redistrict every ten years is found nowhere in the Minnesota constitution and is the result of court precedent, the only way for the courts to have standing to draw a new map or force a new map to be drawn is if there is a corresponding lawsuit. Which, since the 60's, there has always been.
  
  And since everyone pretty much expects that the courts will draw the map this time around too, it's just the first step in what will likely be a year-long process.
  
  
• MPR talked with GOP State Sen. Geoff Michel about redistricting this week if you're interested in hearing what the head of redistricting for the Republican Senate has to say.
  
  In everything I've heard from the GOP so far, they are saying all the right things about working with the minority in the legislature and the Governor to produce a bipartisan map. As I've pointed out before, it wouldn't be completely crazy for the two parties to want to work something out, weather that will happen or not remains to be seen.
  
  
• rougemapper over at Swing State Project took to Dave's Redistricting app to try his hand at a Minnesota map. Check it out.
  
  

MNGOP decides they won't run against Amy

Seeing how well she polls Republicans have decided that they would rather run against Al Franken.



I guess we'll see how far they get with this strategy, but it's certainly a concession of the obvious, Amy Klobuchar is extremely popular and will be very difficult to beat. Given those conditions I can see why they'd rather not run against her.

And while they managed to get the wording updated on the front page to "destroying", they didn't actually get to the whole site yet.



If, like me, you were surprised to see that Amy voted for a bill that never actually got to the floor of the Senate it's because she didn't. This is what they are referring to:

The Environment and Public Works Committee voted 10-1 -- with seven Republican members skipping the vote -- to approve the climate change legislation drafted by Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

At least we know how they're planning to attack Amy, by attacking someone else.

Here's the address of the web site they put up, if you're curious: http://www.amyfacts.com

Redistricting: What makes a fair map

I've been meaning to write this post for awhile and finally got the imputes from a Twitter discussion with Harry Niska yesterday. This is how it started:



For those who don't know @amysd19 is Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch who was speaking at the Elephant Club luncheon. While Senator Koch is probably right, I took issue with her use of the word fair in regards to redistricting.

Whitewashing Twain

NPR:

An Alabama-based publishing company will replace the n-word in The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn with the word "slave," and print Tom Sawyer without the term "Injun." Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben says replacing the words will allow more students to experience the classic books.

I have to say that my immediate reaction to this story was the same as almost everyone else's, this is to say my reaction was along the lines of WTF? What's next, taking the F-word out of Glengarry Glen Ross?

I immediately thought of Stephen Spielberg's lame move to edit the guns out of the cops hands in E.T., replacing them with walkie talkies.

Redistricting: How we can expect the districts to change

Now that we know Minnesota will be keeping all eight of it's districts we can begin to look at what those districts might look like.

The Census Bureau has released population and apportionment information by state, Minnesota's population is 5,303,925, but have not released the more detailed data that will further brake down where those 5.3 million people are distributed in the state.

The ideal district size is achieved by dividing 5,303,925 by 8, which is 662,990.625. Since you can't have .625 of a person in one district the actual district sizes will end up being 662,990 and 662,991.

Although we don't have the official data from the Census Bureau yet, we do have good data from the Legislative Coordinating Commission's Geographic Information Services. Their 2009 Statewide Population Estimate came in at 5,300,942, which gives us ideal district sizes of 662,618.

These numbers are so close that I don't think it's necessary to try and extrapolate what the actual 2010 Census district sizes will be, I'm just going to use the LCC GIS's estimates, those are (difference from ideal size in brackets):

CD1: 635,429 [-27,189]
CD2: 737,324 [+74,706]
CD3: 664,528 [+1,537]
CD4: 623,879 [-38,739]
CD5: 618,292 [-44,326]
CD6: 755,489 [+92,871]
CD7: 615,742 [-46,876]
CD8: 649,438 [-13,180]