Purple state: Mapping Vikings stadium legislative votes

Minnesota House Vikings stadium votes

Being a numbers nerd and a sports fan, I couldn't help noodling around the vote totals from this week's Vikings stadium votes. After the Minnesota House of Representatives approved the bill 73-58, everyone reported the partisan breakdown (DFL went 40-20 pro; GOP went 33-48 anti).

I was intrigued by the geographic one: using a crude method (Districts 1-31 were non-metro; everything else metro) I calculated "Greater Minnesota" House members voted aye 43-18, while Twin Cities-area reps said no 40-30. I wondered aloud (well, via Twitter) whether anyone had a map.

Kevin Schaul, who works with MinnPost's interactive team, used  our list to make the zoomable one, above. (It's from his personal site, which is worth checking out.)

You can see the further away you get from the stadium site (and Minneapolis sales taxes), the more purple your representatives become.

The hyper-conservative area I'll loosely dub the "Bachmann belt," extending north past Mille Lacs, remained anti-subsidy, as did the more right-wing southwest exurbs. Most of the lefty Minneapolis said no (House Minority Leader Paul Thissen was an exception), but a cluster of St. Paul reps — perhaps propelled by labor and the promise of their own athletic baubles — voted yes.

The Senate map (below) isn't way different. Using my rought-cut House method, Greater Minnesota went ga-ga for the stadium in even greater numbers: 23-8 yes, or 74 percent (compared to 71 percent in the House). Metro Senators said no 20-15.

Thus, the "geography gap" was greater than the "partisan gap" — where you lived was a better predictor than which party you belonged to. By the way, there was also a "gender gap" — 64 percent of male reps voted aye compared to 38 percent of the women.

Minnesota Senate Vikings stadium votes