1/ So yesterday #mnleg Rep. @jeremymunson rolled out a proposal that western Minnesota should secede and join South Dakota. It’s not going to happen, but I’m a nerd, and instead of doing the dishes last night spent hours doin' math & makin’ graphics. mprnews.org/story/2021/03/… 
@jeremymunson 2/ First, the basics: the 64 MN counties @jeremymunson proposes to secede have around 1.6M people. That means that South Dakota would actually be the junior partner in this merger, with fewer than 900K residents.
The denser non-seceding MN counties have just under 4M people.
The denser non-seceding MN counties have just under 4M people.
3/ The seceding counties (“ex-Minnesota”) have a per-capita GDP of around $51K/person. That's poorer than either Old SD ($63K/person) or the counties that wouldn’t secede in this scenario (a whopping $76K/person).
4/ The result: Both Old South Dakota and the seceding counties would find themselves poorer than before as part of this secession + merger, while Rump Minnesota would be much richer.
5/ Of course, this secession idea isn’t based on demographics. It’s about politics. The seceding counties voted about 62% for Trump in 2020, almost identical to Trump’s support in Old South Dakota.
6/ So the Republican majority in these seceding counties would likely get a government more to their liking: lower taxes, less regulation, more socially conservative policies. Also less spending on things like K-12 education (comes with lower taxes + less money)
7/ Not so happy would be the 300,000 or so Biden voters in the seceding counties — or the 900,000 Trump voters left behind in New Minnesota, which would go from a lean-D state to one as liberal as Illinois or New York by virtue of losing its conservative hinterland.
8/ South Dakota is a supermajority Republican state, and New South Dakota would likely be similar. New Minnesota, meanwhile, would likely be supermajority DFL in the rump #mnleg.
9/ So, what impact would this have on federal politics? Not as much as you might think.
New South Dakota would likely continue to elect two GOP senators, and New Minnesota to elect two Democratic senators.
New South Dakota would likely continue to elect two GOP senators, and New Minnesota to elect two Democratic senators.
10/ Currently SD has 1 congressional district and MN 8 (soon to be 7, probably), with 5 Rs and 4 Ds.
I estimate that New MN would probably have 5 CDs (of which 4 would probably be D in most years), and New SD would have three CDs, all solid R.
So no real change.
I estimate that New MN would probably have 5 CDs (of which 4 would probably be D in most years), and New SD would have three CDs, all solid R.
So no real change.
11/ The gerrymandering that a supermajority DFL legislature in New MN could get up to would be interesting, though the long, thin nature of the state really limits your ability to slice up counties without losing compactness.
12/ The most obvious approach here for dividing up New MN’s 5 CDs is one in Southeast MN stretching into Dakota County, one on the Range stretching into the north metro, and then three in the central part of the state.
13/ By moving a few congressional districts from likely-D Minnesota into solid-R South Dakota, Republicans would gain a few banked electoral votes, which could matter in a really close presidential election. (But they’d lose the outside possibility of winning MN, now solid blue.)
14/ In the even *rarer* scenario of an election decided in the House, where states vote by delegations, this would play to Dems’ benefit: instead of a divided MN delegation, it’d be safely Democratic.
But now we’re getting too far afield.
But now we’re getting too far afield.
15/ Despite agreeing on national political issues, I suspect the marriage between South Dakota and Western Minnesota would prove troubled, especially for the former South Dakotans, who’d now be outnumbered by newcomers.
16/ Imagine being Sen. John Thune or Mike Rounds, with a secure, popular base of support — and then suddenly you get a million new voters who don’t know you and probably will want at least one of their own to represent New South Dakota in Congress.
17/ The seceding Minnesotans would also probably not be OK with the state capitol in Pierre, centrally located in Old South Dakota but really, really far from Bemidji or St. Cloud. They’d want the capitol to move east, and have the votes to make it happen.
18/ Anyway, here’s a table comparing the demography of Old SD and MN, the seceding counties (“ex-MN”) and the new states:
19/ Check out my full analysis here: mprnews.org/story/2021/03/…
20/20 And subscribe to @MPRnews’ Capitol View politics newsletter, which I write every weekday, and where I first published this analysis this morning: mprnews.org/newsletters
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