For my first attempt at a redistricting diary I decided to try my hand at Minnesota, partly because I've lived there in the past and partly because it is a place where we have failed to maximize out opportunities. The core problem is that the Minneapolis and St. Paul districts are so ridiculously Democratic that many votes are wasted there, even though there is no VRA requirement to do so. MN-05 is surely the most heavily Democratic white-majority district in the country.
For this map, I have allocated Minnesota's eight seats as follows: One Democratic seat across the northern tier of the state, one Republican exurban/rural seat, and six seats that are each a microcosm of the state--part urban, part suburban, and part rural. Except for ensuring that Tim Walz has a district that includes Mankato, Rochester and Austin, I did not take the home of any incumbent or challenger into consideration in this process. By happenstance, however, each of my eight districts contained the home of just one incumbent. Thus, I renumbered the districts to keep the same district number for each.
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