Yesterday the Census Bureau gave us a major data dump, and besides the expected deluge in obscure formats only bureaucracies still use, they gave us some nice readable toplines too, you can find them here: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/2020-population-and-housing-state-data.html
The Cliff’s Notes summary is that the urban areas that lean democratic gained population and the rural areas where the republicans are making their last stand lost population. Most elected bodies from the U.S. House, legislatures, county boards, and on down to city councils apportion seats in those bodies based on population, so this is a potential huge gain for us democrats in the 2022 and later elections. Of course, the GOP’s gerrymanderers will be creating even more diabolically twisted gerrymandered districts to try to stay in power while the majority of the voters want them gone.
Focusing on Minnesota, our population grew by 7.6% or 403k (thousand) since the 2010 census. 243k of that gain was in the democratic strongholds of Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, and Washington counties in the twin cities metro, while dem leaning smaller outstate metro counties Olmsted, Blue Earth, and Clay added another 30k so almost 70% of the population growth was in blue counties. In contrast GOP strongholds Sherburne, Crow Wing, and Otter Tail counties gained only 16k together, though the smaller counties where the GOP is hiding out probably provided much of the rest of the state’s population increase. So we know the blue counties got at least 140k more people or nearly 3% of Minnesota’s population, but how will that effect redistricting and the 2022 and beyond sections?
We barely hung on to our 8 congressional seats so they’ll be no congressional “musical chairs” and major redrawing of the district lines is unlikely as parties tend to protect their own. MPR was nice enough to decode the numbers for us at this link: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/08/12/census-major-changes-for-state-demographics-politics. CD1 needs 23k more population, neighboring CD7 needs more to so can’t spare any but CD2 has almost that many too many, but the transferred turf is pretty “swingy” so CD1 will probably still lean red, while CD2 could pick up some excess democrats from the Dem metro vote sinks otherwise known as CDs 4 and 5. Deep red CD6 in the metro’s western and northern exurbs has surplus population too which will likely go to deep red CD7 and newly red CD8, so rural CDs 1,7,and 8 will probably remain GOP “homelands”. But as the districts “scrunch in” towards CDs 4 and 5 about 80k mostly Dem voters could be transferred towards CD6 while 100k mostly GOP voters could be shifted into already red CDs 1, 7, and 8. Being in the middle of the state and thus bordering most other CDs 6 is vulnerable to such shifts, it went the other direction from blue to red after the 2002 redistricting, and we’d love to turn CD6 blue again!
So with the GOP unlikely to gerrymander a congressional seat their way (they’ll try anyways…), CD6 could be put in play to return the DFL to a 5-3 majority in Congress. But how about down ballot? The legislators will take the first shot at redistricting and aren’t about to map themselves out of jobs, so expect the rural districts to get bigger and the metro districts will get scrunched more, but won’t matter ’cause they’re all democratic. All that scrunching will add at least a house district or two and probably a senate district to the heavily DFL metro counties and a house seat in Olmsted and possibly house seats in Blue Earth and Beltrami counties… That senate seat will give the DFL back the senate majority! There are also “wild card” red to blue flips possible in the counties Amy carried in 2018 around Bemidji, Marshall, and Willmar provided the district lines are drawn favorably.
‘Cross the state lines and despite the Dakota’s best efforts they barely rate one congress member each, but in Iowa we see a similar pattern to Minnesota as the “Peoples Republic of Johnson County” and Dem leaning Polk County had double digit population gains. Depending how the maps are drawn even northwest Iowa’s CD4 could no longer be safe GOP, but more likely IA2 will stay safe democratic while IA2 and IA3 will get bluer. Iowa has some of the best political bloggers, and “Bleeding Iowa” blog games out the possibilities for us here: https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2021/08/12/redistricting-scenarios-part-6-possible-districts-revisited/ Wisconsin has been the Midwest’s GOP gerrymandering poster boy and with little population increase and almost none in Milwaukee County, it’s no surprise that southwest Wisconsin’s long serving democratic congressman Kind announced his retirement just before the data dump. But wait, there’s Nebraska! Thanks to Nebraska’s breaking out electoral votes by congressional district, “NE2” has become a part of the political lexicon for over a decade. Nebraska’s 2nd district is Omaha and some suburbs and the GOP which runs the state has managed to keep it a swing district by gerrymandering a blue swath of south Omaha metro into a red district. Sorry GOP, that ain’t gonna work anymore- While Nebraska’s population grew by 7%, blue Douglas and Sarpy counties in the Omaha metro and one county away Lancaster County where Nebraska tests tractors at Lincoln grew by double digit percentages. At this point the Nebraska GOP gerrymanderer’s only choice is whether they want to surrender NE2 or take a gamble and make two swing districts.
So redistricting is good news, despite the GOP’s best attempts otherwise. I’ll report back when we get finer level data and see if things like minority opportunity districts around the immigrant concentrations in southwest Minnesota and the Native Nations in northern Minnesota are possible…
Sassy Democrat 