Daily Liberal Mapping Project: CD4 could be better with McCollum's help

This is the fifth of nine articles in the Daily Liberal Mapping Project. These articles examine Minnesota's voting patterns precinct by precinct, with data from the 2006 election. Perhaps you missed my analysis of CD7, CD6, and CD5?

In this edition of the Daily Liberal Mapping Project, we look at the other central-city Congressional District, CD4. CD4 is the home of Betty McCollum, who has served the district since 2001. The district is pretty much a guaranteed Democratic vote, and it has a lot of similarities to CD5, which we discussed on Monday. However, because the 4th also encompasses a handful of suburbs to the north, it is less overwhelmingly Democratic. It still has a high Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+13.

The 4th not only has a very strong Democratic vote, it generally has party-line voters. Volatility is a measure of variation across races. Precincts with high volatility are those that see a lot of ticket-splitters. As the map below shows, there are only a few districts with volatility higher than the state median.




However, like CD5, CD4 has poor turnout throughout the district, with only a handful of precincts where over 75 percent of eligible voters actually voted. This low turnout seriously harms the DFL's chances in statewide races. The final map illustrates the above point clearly. This map combines voting percentages and turnout into a single measure, the percent of eligible voters that voted for the winning party. Looking at this measure, it is clear how Democrats' majority in CD4 is diluted: only a smattering of precincts had a Democratic vote of over 55 percent of eligible voters, despite the fact that over 85 percent of votes cast were for Democrats. Fixing this problem could provide a huge boost for Al Franken in November.



Unlike in CD5, however, the problem may be less easily fixed in CD4. Keith Ellison is running a major voter registratraion drive in the 5th. In the 4th, not only is there no such thing, but McCollum has not showed any particular desire to help Franken. Without help from McCollum to increase turnout in CD4, Franken will need to launch his own Get-Out-The-Vote campaign there.

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