With the new state House and Senate district lines in place, MinnPost has mapped the political leaning of each district based on average precinct results from the three most recent Minnesota House elections: 2006, 2008 and 2010. (For more information on our methodology, read, “Calculating the political lean of new legislative districts.”)

We also built a chart, below, of the 41 House and 25 Senate districts most likely to be contested in the 2012 election. These include districts where the partisan lean was 10 percentage points or less, as well as districts with a partisan lean greater than 10 where the incumbent is of the opposite party.

In the House, we found a total of 14 Republican incumbents running in or retiring from districts that favor the DFL or are evenly split, while no DFL incumbents are running in GOP-leaning districts. For the House to change hands, Democrats need a net gain of six seats. In the Senate, 11 Republican incumbents are running in districts that favor the DFL with one incumbent in an evenly split district, and two DFL incumbents are running in districts that favor the GOP. To gain control of the Senate, Democrats need a net gain of four seats.

Finally, while the numbers illuminate part of the picture, it is important to note that this statistical range is not predictive of the many other factors that come into play during an election cycle — personality, finances, gaffes, third party candidates and more.