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.) Purple is a pro-stadium vote; gold anti-stadium; gray a non-vote.

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