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To: Mike Dean, Common Cause Minnesota

Laura Fredrick Wang, League of Women Voters Minnesota


From: Dr. Michael McDonald, Associate Professor at George Mason University
RE: Common Cause Minnesota Memo on Redistricting Plan L1101_0

An analysis of proposed redistricting plan L1101_0 by Dr. Michael McDonald at George Mason
University for Common Cause Minnesota finds that the proposed redistricting plan is biased
towards the Republican Party. Using a metric commonly used by practitioners, academics, and
the courts to assess the partisan bias of redistricting plans, Dr. McDonald finds that the DFL
would need to win 53.3% of the vote within the legislative districts to win a majority of the
legislative seats.

Dr. McDonald and his colleagues are leading the Public Mapping Project, designed to bring
more public participation and transparency to the redistricting process. More information about
the Project is available at www.publicmapping.org.

Methodology
The analysis used here is consistent with the approach used by practitioners, academics, and the
courts. The approach has been used for the past 40 years by the tie-breakers appointed to the
New Jersey Legislative Redistricting Commission by the Chief Justice of the New Jersey
Supreme Court.1 It has been used to assess partisan gerrymandering claims by Democratic and
Republican expert witnesses in the 2003 Texas re-redistricting court case and a 2002 seminal
partisan gerrymandering case in Pennsylvania.2 The methodology has been discussed extensively
in peer-reviewed academic journals.3

The idea is to measure the underlying partisan strength of districts using statewide elections. The
underlying partisan strength is one among many factors that determine election outcomes,
including the power of incumbency, national and state tides, and candidates’ campaign
resources, among many other factors. The method is as follows:

1. Calculate the vote for a statewide office(s) within the proposed districts. I describe the
methodology used to calculate these statistics in the appendix.

1
Donald E. Stokes. 1993. “Legislative Redistricting by the New Jersey Plan.” New Brunswick, New Jersey: Fund
for New Jersey.
2
Examples of expert witnesses representing Democrats, Republicans, and bipartisan commissions who have used
principal components of the method include Keith Gaddie in LULAC v. Perry, 126 S. Ct. 2594 (2006); Gary King in
Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146 (1993); Jonathan Katz in O'Lear v. Miller No. 222 F. Supp. 2d 850 - 2002;
Allan Lichtman in Vieth v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 188 F. Supp. 2d 532 (MD Pa. 2002); and Michael
McDonald in In Re 2001 Redistricting Cases (Case No. S-10504).
33
Bernard Grofman and Gary King. 2007. “The Future of Partisan Symmetry as a Judicial Test for Partisan
Gerrymandering after LULAC v. Perry.” Election Law Journal 6(1): 10; J. Morgan Kousser. 1996. “Estimating the
Partisan Consequences of Redistricting Plans-Simply,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 21(4): 530; Janet Campagna
and Bernard Grofman 1990. “Party Control and Partisan Bias in 1980s Congressional Redistricting.” The Journal of
Politics 52(4): 1247.

1
2. Calculate the DFL percentage of the DFL plus Republican vote, what is often referred to
as the two-party vote.

3. Apply a uniform vote swing by adding and subtracting the same percentage increment to
each district. For example, by adding and subtracting 1% to the two-party vote share in
each district.

4. Note the percentage of districts that a party constitutes a majority for a given vote share.
Of most interest is the percentage of seats a party is expected to win with 50% of the two-
party vote.

In Figure 1, I plot the seats to votes relationship for the DFL two-party share of the 2008
presidential votes tabulated within the proposed L1101_0 districts. In a fair plan, a party should
win 50% of the seats with 50% of the vote. This partisan fairness analysis indicates the DFL
needs 53.3% of the two-party vote to win a majority of the House seats.

Figure 1. DFL Seats to Votes Relationship for Plan L1101_0


Using the 2008 Presidential Vote

2
Appendix: Methodology to Calculate 2008 Presidential Vote within Proposed
Districts
These data are 2008 presidential election data obtained from The Minnesota Legislative
Coordinating Commission’s Geographic Information Services available at:
http://www.gis.leg.mn/html/download.html.

The LCC-GIS requests the following disclaimer accompany these data:

“LCC-GIS makes no representation or warranties, express or implied, with respect to the reuse of
data provided herewith, regardless of its format or the means of its transmission. There is no
guarantee or representation to the user as to the accuracy, currency, suitability, or reliability of
this data for any purpose. The user accepts the data 'as is', and assumes all risks associated with
its use. By accepting this data, the user agrees not to transmit this data or provide access to it or
any part of it to another party unless the user shall include with the data a copy of this
disclaimer.”

I perform further database work to merge these data with the 2010 census and to disaggregate
these data to the census block level, so that they may be re-aggregated into proposed redistricting
plans, following these steps: 4

1. I correspond the 2008 precincts obtained from LCC-GIS as best as possible to their
equivalents in the 2010 census geography, what are known as voting tabulation districts.
In a few instances for small-population geographies, I did not make a correspondence.

2. I apportion the precinct level election results into the smaller-sized census blocks by the
census block’s share of the precinct’s voting-age population.

3. Using what is known as a block assignment file, which lists the district assigned to each
census block, I sum the election results into the proposed districts.

The 2008 presidential vote tabulated within the proposed L1101_0 districts is presented in Table
1. I calculate the DFL percent of the two-party vote, which is the DFL vote divided by the DFL
vote plus the Republican vote. The average DFL vote share among these districts is 55.3%. I
calculate a normalized two-party vote to simulate a toss-up election, where the political parties
have equal vote shares at 50%, by subtracting 5.3 percentage points from each district’s two-
party vote share.

4
The census block level database is available at: http://www.publicmapping.org/resources/data

3
Table 1. 2008 Presidential Vote within Proposed Plan L1101_0 Districts
All
DFL Republic Others Normali
’08 an ’08 ’08 zed
Preside Preside Preside Two-
Distri ntial ntial ntial Two-Party Party
ct Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote
01A 9,368 10,289 427 47.7% 42.1%
01B 9,856 9,001 387 52.3% 46.7%
02A 9,780 9,967 413 49.5% 44.0%
02B 9,844 9,971 369 49.7% 44.2%
03A 12,256 7,562 456 61.8% 56.3%
03B 14,056 6,936 551 67.0% 61.4%
04A 14,793 9,477 496 61.0% 55.4%
04B 15,291 8,770 459 63.6% 58.0%
05A 10,167 11,104 429 47.8% 42.3%
05B 9,444 12,613 432 42.8% 37.3%
06A 11,227 10,445 469 51.8% 46.3%
06B 8,872 11,206 558 44.2% 38.7%
07A 13,508 7,399 320 64.6% 59.1%
07B 10,244 8,119 453 55.8% 50.3%
08A 16,888 7,214 402 70.1% 64.5%
08B 15,393 6,365 401 70.7% 65.2%
09A 10,944 7,357 292 59.8% 54.3%
09B 10,509 10,276 446 50.6% 45.0%
10A 9,615 11,926 414 44.6% 39.1%
10B 8,972 11,822 495 43.1% 37.6%
11A 11,098 11,456 520 49.2% 43.7%
11B 8,904 11,962 409 42.7% 37.1%
12A 9,959 10,940 380 47.7% 42.1%
12B 10,087 15,073 606 40.1% 34.6%
13A 9,313 11,781 497 44.1% 38.6%
13B 9,296 10,438 363 47.1% 41.6%
14A 11,266 14,149 442 44.3% 38.8%
14B 9,278 11,730 482 44.2% 38.6%
15A 10,074 9,983 385 50.2% 44.7%
15B 10,583 8,448 496 55.6% 50.1%
16A 11,160 9,582 550 53.8% 48.3%
16B 8,947 9,918 432 47.4% 41.9%
17A 9,054 10,868 571 45.4% 39.9%
17B 9,442 13,673 584 40.8% 35.3%
18A 9,193 10,774 510 46.0% 40.5%

4
18B 8,753 9,429 353 48.1% 42.6%
19A 8,376 10,689 512 43.9% 38.4%
19B 8,610 11,579 512 42.6% 37.1%
20A 13,034 9,480 432 57.9% 52.4%
20B 10,851 7,208 437 60.1% 54.6%
21A 10,336 11,674 561 47.0% 41.4%
21B 12,015 9,343 463 56.3% 50.7%
22A 11,932 7,522 352 61.3% 55.8%
22B 9,680 10,633 519 47.7% 42.1%
23A 9,394 11,609 460 44.7% 39.2%
23B 11,060 8,082 363 57.8% 52.3%
24A 10,484 9,017 350 53.8% 48.2%
24B 10,649 11,320 298 48.5% 42.9%
25A 10,371 10,550 477 49.6% 44.0%
25B 13,113 8,334 422 61.1% 55.6%
26A 11,675 7,137 438 62.1% 56.5%
26B 11,756 9,674 461 54.9% 49.3%
27A 7,342 12,433 333 37.1% 31.6%
27B 8,227 11,479 322 41.7% 36.2%
28A 9,062 11,216 542 44.7% 39.2%
28B 8,515 11,095 461 43.4% 37.9%
29A 8,770 13,101 424 40.1% 34.6%
29B 9,564 11,065 390 46.4% 40.8%
30A 8,961 13,634 376 39.7% 34.1%
30B 10,957 12,327 371 47.1% 41.5%
31A 9,527 11,562 322 45.2% 39.7%
31B 11,124 13,408 444 45.3% 39.8%
32A 10,180 12,893 466 44.1% 38.6%
32B 6,146 9,594 213 39.0% 33.5%
33A 10,196 13,029 346 43.9% 38.4%
33B 11,743 10,675 269 52.4% 46.9%
34A 8,175 12,434 382 39.7% 34.1%
34B 9,566 12,929 224 42.5% 37.0%
35A 12,096 11,523 258 51.2% 45.7%
35B 12,795 12,018 313 51.6% 46.0%
36A 14,083 9,770 340 59.0% 53.5%
36B 14,130 8,396 453 62.7% 57.2%
37A 11,186 5,264 226 68.0% 62.5%
37B 11,528 5,905 296 66.1% 60.6%
38A 11,449 9,567 420 54.5% 49.0%
38B 12,497 7,620 439 62.1% 56.6%
39A 10,028 10,397 360 49.1% 43.6%
39B 11,964 9,561 428 55.6% 50.1%

5
40A 13,003 11,882 370 52.3% 46.7%
40B 12,941 11,820 375 52.3% 46.7%
41A 13,500 10,547 406 56.1% 50.6%
41B 14,479 9,447 392 60.5% 55.0%
42A 13,093 9,478 365 58.0% 52.5%
42B 12,660 9,229 381 57.8% 52.3%
43A 12,322 12,132 302 50.4% 44.9%
43B 10,964 10,640 293 50.8% 45.2%
44A 7,753 12,607 453 38.1% 32.6%
44B 9,215 11,274 280 45.0% 39.4%
45A 11,130 12,632 285 46.8% 41.3%
45B 11,748 10,752 248 52.2% 46.7%
46A 13,716 12,487 407 52.3% 46.8%
46B 13,705 12,421 284 52.5% 46.9%
47A 15,532 7,045 369 68.8% 63.3%
47B 17,889 7,854 352 69.5% 64.0%
48A 14,374 12,263 308 54.0% 48.4%
48B 14,285 11,819 241 54.7% 49.2%
49A 13,398 9,891 428 57.5% 52.0%
49B 11,936 6,248 294 65.6% 60.1%
50A 13,898 10,456 423 57.1% 51.5%
50B 13,071 7,973 465 62.1% 56.6%
51A 12,293 10,138 277 54.8% 49.3%
51B 11,125 10,035 338 52.6% 47.0%
52A 9,606 11,030 457 46.5% 41.0%
52B 8,384 10,840 425 43.6% 38.1%
53A 8,862 9,008 261 49.6% 44.1%
53B 9,359 12,324 315 43.2% 37.6%
54A 9,197 12,067 266 43.3% 37.7%
54B 8,895 11,393 355 43.8% 38.3%
55A 10,478 10,959 262 48.9% 43.4%
55B 11,149 9,751 301 53.3% 47.8%
56A 13,030 10,128 345 56.3% 50.7%
56B 12,003 10,600 338 53.1% 47.6%
57A 11,399 10,465 322 52.1% 46.6%
57B 11,455 10,950 313 51.1% 45.6%
58A 11,530 10,697 447 51.9% 46.3%
58B 10,837 10,637 430 50.5% 44.9%
59A 14,873 2,988 276 83.3% 77.7%
59B 16,845 3,037 248 84.7% 79.2%
60A 16,885 4,509 541 78.9% 73.4%
60B 14,930 4,057 411 78.6% 73.1%
61A 23,352 4,358 425 84.3% 78.7%

6
61B 17,992 6,709 278 72.8% 67.3%
62A 14,183 1,658 325 89.5% 84.0%
62B 16,653 1,895 361 89.8% 84.3%
63A 20,032 5,436 394 78.7% 73.1%
63B 19,378 3,648 461 84.2% 78.6%
64A 16,015 4,925 339 76.5% 71.0%
64B 14,819 2,923 307 83.5% 78.0%
65A 17,561 7,209 382 70.9% 65.4%
65B 20,494 4,509 416 82.0% 76.4%
66A 14,019 4,108 357 77.3% 71.8%
66B 9,978 2,756 256 78.4% 72.8%
67A 11,886 5,057 320 70.2% 64.6%
67B 12,660 6,505 373 66.1% 60.5%

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