Replies

First of all, MN definitely will lose a CD after 2020 (unless it becomes the new ND of the oil and gas industry).

Trying to draw Minneapolis and St. Paul into a single district would be foolosh, since we’d likely lose three suburban districts surrounding it. We’re better off drawing an über-RAT MN-05 in Minneapolis and Hennepin County, and an almost as heavily RAT MN-04 in the most RAT parts of Ramsey (including St. Paul), Anoka, Dakota and Washington Counties (plus going south to take in Northville in Rice County). The three suburban counties surrounding the Twin Cities can be given GOP majorities by (i) having the Hennepin-based MN-03 go west to Wright County and take in sone GOP suburbs north of Hennepin in Anoka and southern Sherburbe), (ii) having the MN-02 add some GOP counties to the west and lose Northfield and its portion of Washington County, and (iii) have the heavily Republican MN-06 go from St. Cloud to almost all of Washington County and marginal parts of Dakota County, skipping over Anoka but adding Chisago and maybe some RAT areas like Pine County. The two remaining CDs would be rural and have given Trump comfortable majorities, with the Duluth-based MN-08 (held by RAT Nolan) losing its southern counties but moving west to the ND border (and taking in like half of Collin Peterson’s CD), while the southern MN-01 (held by RAT Walz) moving west and tgen north to taje in the other half of Peterson’s CD. Peterson likely would retire or lose the RAT primary wherever he ran, and the likeliest result woukd be a 5R, 2D House delegation from MN (a huge improvement from the current 5D, 3R delegation with two Republicans in CDs that only gave Trump between 40%-47%).