(C) Minnesota Reformer
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The Topline: Minnesota’s voter registration disparities [1]
['Christopher Ingraham', 'More From Author', '- February']
Date: 2024-02-05
Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: embarrassing snowfall totals; the death of taxidermy; manufacturing expectations; and the biggest disparities in voter registration.
We’re getting out-snowed by Arkansas and Tennessee
The National Weather Service in the Twin Cities shared this depressing map at the end of last week, showing that parts of states as far south as Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee have received more snowfall than Minneapolis and St. Paul this year. Ouch.
The Star Tribune also released a nifty interactive snowfall tracker that lets you choose your city and see how winter-to-date snowfall stacks up against the historic record. Last year around this time, for instance, there was about a foot of snow on the ground in the Twin Cities. Today there’s precisely zero.
The DNR reminds everyone that the heat is bad for lake ice, and to keep a close eye on what they call “backyard” water bodies like ponds and drainage ditches, which melt faster than lakes and can be a draw for curious children. The agency says that in the past 25 years at least eight children under the age of 10 have died after falling through thin backyard ice.
For the morbidly curious, they keep up-to-date ice mortality data here.
Is taxidermy dead?
The Duluth News-Tribune has a deep dive on Minnesota’s taxidermy industry. Longtime businesses are closing down and having trouble finding buyers. Part of the trouble is waning interest in hunting: The total number of deer hunting licenses sold in 2023 was less than it was in the year 2000, according to DNR data, despite the state adding 800,000 new residents since then.
Minnesota manufacturers expecting better conditions in 2024
An annual survey conducted by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that manufacturers’ expectations for profitability, orders and productivity are higher than they were a year ago.
Manufacturing accounts for 12% of the state’s GDP and 11% of overall employment, according to DEED. Workers in manufacturing earn about 10% more than their counterparts in other industries.
Biggest voter registration disparities are between renters and homeowners
KSTP released a survey on a bunch of presidential primary horse race stuff, which isn’t terribly interesting given overwhelming front-runners in both parties. But the survey does include some numbers on voter registration in Minnesota.
It shows that 88% of respondents say they’re registered to vote, including virtually identical shares of Democrats and Republicans. College-educated Minnesotans are considerably more likely to be registered (96%) than those with only a high school degree (80%). Income is another solid predictor of voting, with high-income respondents more likely than those who make less.
But the biggest disparity in the data was between homeowners and renters. Ninety-four percent of the former group reported being registered, compared to just 75% of the latter.
The gap between homeowners and renters was even larger than the gap between seniors (96%) and those under age 34 (80%), long understood as one of the primary explanations for why American policy-making is so skewed toward the old and wealthy.
To all the renters reading this, especially the young ones: Go out and get registered today!
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https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/02/05/the-topline-minnesotas-voter-registration-disparities/
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