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Maps and the 2004 election in Minnesota The first series of maps shows precinct-level results in the Twin Cities metropoltian area for the 2004 elections and the most recent comparable election. Green areas represent precincts that voted strongly for the DFL and red areas represent precincts that voted strongly Republican. "Swing" precincts are highlighted — bright yellow indicates precincts which voted slightly Democratic and dark yellow indicates a slight Republican edge. [More details] Voting
for the Minnesota House - 2004 Voting
for U.S. Congress - 2004 Voting
for President - 2004 Vote percentage for Jesse Ventura in 1998
Maps of the St. Paul Mayor's race 2001 Kelly
raw vote totals by precinct
Maps posted in summer 2004 This series of maps compared election district boundaries in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area with precinct-level results from the 2002 and 2000 elections. Incumbent names (prior to the 2004 elections) are shown in green (DFL) or red (Republican). Green areas represent precincts that voted strongly for the DFL and red areas represent precincts that voted strongly Republican. "Swing" precincts are highlighted — bright yellow indicates precincts which voted slightly Democratic and dark yellow indicates a slight Republican edge. [More details]
In order to make the maps legible, I have removed all precinct boundaries. Thus one cannot see exactly how many precincts voted for Bush and how many for Gore. Further, there is no good way of indicating how many people voted in each precinct (the population density maps may enable some extremely rough guesses). Thus, it would be premature to conclude from the image alone that Olsen's district narrowly supported Gore. But the map might well lead one to investigate voting totals in that district. Most of the data used to construct these maps is publicly available from the Geographic Information Services Office of the Minnesota Legislature (roads, rivers, and census data are taken from other publicly available sources). These maps are drawn with ArcView and then exported to JPEG format.
Details on how precinct-level colors are assigned: For nearly all the maps, the number of votes for the Republican candidate were divided by the total number of votes cast for that office in each precinct. When the fraction was more than 0.55, a red color was assigned to the precinct, with successively darker reds being assigned when the fraction exceeded 0.60, 0.70, 0.80, and 0.90. When the fraction was less than 0.45, a green color was assigned, with successively darker greens being assigned as the fraction fell below 0.40, 0.30, 0.20, and 0.10. Fractions between 0.45 and 0.50 were colored bright yellow; those between 0.50 and 0.55 were colored dark yellow. Note that this procedure tends to very slightly overrepresent Democratic turnout, as all votes for third party candidates are lumped in with the Democrats. Eyeball comparisons of these maps with those made in the opposite manner (those that overrepresent Republican turnout) do not appear to show any major differences except in the 2002 governor's race (see next paragraph). However, I have not performed any statistical calculations to verify this. Because of the strong showing of Independence Party candidate Tim Penny in the 2002 Gubernatorial election (16% of the popular vote), a different method was used to portray the results from that race. For these maps, the total number of Pawlenty votes in each precinct was divided by the total number of Moe votes. Fractions greater than 1.222 (55/45) were assigned red colors and those less than 0.818 (45/55) were assigned green colors. (Penny did not win any precincts outright in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, though he won quite a few in the southern part of the state.) I confess to being somewhat new to Minnesota politics -- if anyone can point me to other strong third party showings or election peculiarities that should be accounted for, please let me know. Why didn't I use blue for the Democrats, as is commonly done with national maps? Because I wanted to use water features as a point of geographical reference (putting in highways made the maps too cluttered), and I made the water blue. No other reason.
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For
example, the map at right shows Minnesota legislative districts superimposed
on precinct-level results from the 2000 presidential election. DFLers
Michael Nelson and Debra Hilstrom represent areas that voted strongly
for Al Gore, while Republican Stephanie Olsen represents mostly "swing"
precincts which were closely split between Gore and Bush. (Votes for
Nader were negligible except in strongly Democratic precincts).