| Today and yesterday's Census data dump is of three states that didn't gain or lose seats but will need some internal adjustment to reflect population movement from the cities and the rural areas to the suburbs: Minnesota, New Mexico, and Tennessee. (It also included three states with at-large seats that we won't need to discuss: Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota.)
Minnesota barely made the cut for retaining its eighth seat (13,000 fewer people statewide and it would have lost it), which you can see in its very low new target: 662,991 per district. (That's up from about 615K in 2000.) Despite the fact that Michele Bachmann lives there, people keep pouring into MN-06 in the outer-ring suburbs and exurbs to the north, west, and east of the Twin Cities. Only it and MN-02, taking in the southern suburbs/exurbs, will need to shed population, giving part to the rural 1st and 7th, and part to the urban 4th and 5th (and suburban-but-boxed-in 3rd). With split redistricting control, look for the parties, if they're able to agree, to settle on incumbent protection.
Talk of moving the college town of St. Cloud, currently in MN-06, into MN-08 (which would enable Tarryl Clark to run there) may be premature, as MN-08 gained enough population that it can remain about the same. In fact, the fact that it did so may say a lot about last year's election; the 8th's growth has been happening at its southern end, where the MSP exurbs begin and where new Rep. Chip Cravaack hails from, and the population growth in this area has outpaced losses in the dark-blue Iron Range to the north, Jim Oberstar's traditional turf.
| District |
Rep. |
Population |
Deviation |
| MN-01 |
Walz (D) |
644,787 |
(18,204) |
| MN-02 |
Kline (R) |
732,515 |
69,524 |
| MN-03 |
Paulsen (R) |
650,185 |
(12,806) |
| MN-04 |
McCollum (D) |
614,624 |
(48,367) |
| MN-05 |
Ellison (D) |
616,482 |
(46,509) |
| MN-06 |
Bachmann (R) |
759,478 |
96,487 |
| MN-07 |
Peterson (D) |
625,512 |
(37,479) |
| MN-08 |
Cravaack (R) |
660,342 |
(2,649) |
| Total: |
|
5,303,925 |
|
New Mexico's target is 686,393, based on staying at three seats (up from 606K in 2000). Not much change needs to happen between the districts; the largely rural NM-02 will need to gain some population, probably from the southern suburbs of Albuquerque in NM-01. New Mexico has become appreciably more Hispanic over the last decade, though maybe not as dramatically as the other three border states (California, Arizona, and Texas), moving as a state from 45% non-Hispanic white and 42% Hispanic in 2000 to 40% non-Hispanic white and 46% Hispanic in 2010. That means that, since 2000, it has become the first state with a Hispanic plurality. The movement was fairly consistent among districts, with the 1st going from 42% to 48% Hispanic, the 2nd going from 47% to 52% Hispanic, and the 3rd going from 36% to 39% Hispanic (the 3rd, though, is the least-white of the three districts, thanks to an 18% Native American population, which stayed consistent over the decade).
| District |
Rep. |
Population |
Deviation |
| NM-01 |
Heinrich (D) |
701,939 |
15,546 |
| NM-02 |
Pearce (R) |
663,956 |
(22,437) |
| NM-03 |
Lujan (D) |
693,284 |
6,891 |
| Total: |
|
2,059,179 |
|
Tennessee stays comfortably at nine seats, and its new target is 705,122 (up from 632K in 2000). It, like Minnesota, has seen a big population shift from cities and rural areas to suburbs and exurbs, as seen in the huge growth in the 6th (which half-circles Nashville on the east) and the 7th (a thin gerrymander that hooks up Nashville's southern suburbs with Memphis's eastern suburbs). In particular, western Tennessee, both in the city (TN-09) and the rural areas (TN-08) were hard-hit, with the 8th barely gaining and the 9th outright losing population. The GOP controls the redistricting process for the first time here, but with them up 7-2 in the current House delegation (and with Memphis unfixably blue), look for them to lock in current gains rather than getting aggressive with TN-05 (seeing as how Nashville could be cracked into multiple light-red urban/suburban districts, although that has 'dummymander' written all over it).
| District |
Rep. |
Population |
Deviation |
| TN-01 |
Roe (R) |
684,093 |
(21,029) |
| TN-02 |
Duncan (R) |
723,798 |
18,676 |
| TN-03 |
Fleischmann (R) |
692,346 |
(12,776) |
| TN-04 |
Des Jarlais (R) |
688,008 |
(17,114) |
| TN-05 |
Cooper (D) |
707,420 |
2,298 |
| TN-06 |
Black (R) |
788,754 |
83,632 |
| TN-07 |
Blackburn (R) |
792,605 |
87,483 |
| TN-08 |
Fincher (R) |
658,258 |
(46,864) |
| TN-09 |
Cohen (D) |
610,823 |
(94,299) |
| Total: |
|
6,346,105 |
|
|
