Minnesota 2016 Election Results

Minnesota held its general election on November 8, 2016, deciding 200 legislative seats. Control shifted: the Senate moved from a 39-28 Democratic majority to a 34-33 Republican majority.

Highlights

• Gov. Mark Dayton (D), who was not on the ballot, now faced a Republican legislature for the rest of his term after the GOP kept the House alongside its new Senate majority; he called "peace and harmony" unrealistic in the newly divided government.
• Rising individual-market health premiums, up to 67 percent in some cases, had taken center stage in the fight for the Legislature. The Senate swung on Greater Minnesota, the area outside the Twin Cities, where Republicans unseated six incumbents of the DFL, Minnesota's Democratic Party, among them Tax Committee chair Rod Skoe (D), who lost his re-election bid to Paul Utke (R) in Senate District 2. The GOP's own leader lost in the suburbs: Senate Minority Leader David Hann (R) was beaten by Steve Cwodzinski (D), a teacher, by about 1,100 votes in Senate District 48.
• Two GOP wins were close enough for recounts: Jerry Relph (R) held the open Senate District 14 by about 140 votes, and Paul Anderson (R) took the open Senate District 44 by fewer than 200. Senate Republicans then chose Paul Gazelka (R) as majority leader, noting their slim advantage, while Democrats kept Tom Bakk (D) as their leader.
• House Republicans widened their majority, picking up six DFL-held seats while losing one; among the DFL incumbents who lost were Tom Anzelc (D) in House District 5B and John Persell (D) in House District 5A. In Minneapolis, Ilhan Omar (D) won House District 60B to become the nation's first Somali-American legislator. One seat stayed empty into 2017: the state Supreme Court ruled Rep. Bob Barrett (R) ineligible over his residency, so the November votes in House District 32B were not counted, and a February special election filled the seat.
• In all, 17 legislative seats changed party, all but three toward Republicans, and 11 incumbents lost in November. Voters approved Amendment 1, a constitutional amendment handing lawmakers' pay to an independent council.

Legislature

• House (134 seats): 62 D, 72 R before the election, 57 D, 76 R, 1 other or vacant after; control stayed with Republicans.
• Senate (67 seats): 39 D, 28 R before the election, 33 D, 34 R after; control moved from Democrats to Republicans.

Legislative races

Ballot measures