Why the big turnout in the Minnesota House special election in the east metro?

More than 13,000 people, or nearly 47% of registered voters, cast ballots in the special election for a suburban Minnesota House seat this week, far outpacing turnout in any other House special election over the past decade.

Democrats said it was the highest turnout in any special election in state history, likely because of the seat’s significance to the power struggle in the House. It also reflects a burst of energy for the party nearly two months into President Donald Trump’s second term.

The Secretary of State’s Office does not track turnouts over time for special elections, so there will be no official verdict on whether Tuesday’s set a record.

“The results of special elections all around the country show how deeply unpopular Trump is and how motivated Democratic and independent voters are to vote against Republicans,” said House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman.

Democrat David Gottfried received more than 70% of the vote for the Roseville-area seat, nearly 10 percentage points more than the district’s DFL candidate received in November. He also outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris' margin in the district.

Gottfried, a pro bono specialist for a local law firm, said he and his campaign staff knocked on thousands of doors and called almost as many voters throughout the east-metro suburban district. He said the response was fairly uniform: People want the political chaos to end and lawmakers to work in bipartisan fashion.

“A lot of folks are very upset over how the federal government is conducting itself,” Gottfried said.

DFLer Curtis Johnson won the District 40B seat in November, but a judge later found he was ineligible to serve because he failed to meet the state’s residency requirement. That ruling led to Tuesday’s special election between Gottfried and Republican Paul Wikstrom.

The judge’s decision also temporarily shifted a 67-67 split in the chamber to a 67-66 advantage for the GOP. Republicans then abandoned power-sharing negotiations with Democrats and attempted to take control of the House and committees when the legislative session began in January.

But a three-week boycott by Democrats kept Republicans from the quorum needed to conduct business. In January, the state Supreme Court confirmed that 68 votes are necessary.

The justices also ruled that Gov. Tim Walz improperly called a special election for the seat in late January. They pushed the date to March.

Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth said there was record turnout from both parties because of the stakes.

“People were engaged a little bit more because of everything that has gone on here in the state of Minnesota — a tie and then an open seat," she said.

“Then the governor prematurely called [the election], then he had to call it when it was supposed to have been called. That brought more attention to it.”

Wikstrom said he campaigned in the district for the past year and saw almost five times more contributions for the special election than he did for the race last fall. His campaign had two dozen staffers, and he said they turned out more Republican voters in a House special election than any other race since 2002.

Voters were frustrated by the DFL boycott and the fact that Johnson didn’t live in the district, Wikstrom said. He said he would hear some comments about what’s happening at the federal level, but he always brought the conversation back to state issues.

“Occasionally, I would get those comments, but my response was true to my message, which is we need to focus on those issues in the state of Minnesota, which is affordability, crime and public education,” he said.

Gottfried’s addition to the House will bring Democrats back to 67 members, restoring a tie and shifting the two parties to a power-sharing agreement.

The high-profile nature of the race likely boosted turnout, but Democrats say they’ve seen higher turnout for their party in special elections across the country so far this year.

Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, an arm of the national party that works on statehouse races, said Democratic candidates in special legislative elections are outperforming in races by an average of 9 percentage points.

On the same night as Minnesota’s special election, a Democrat in Iowa came within 5 percentage points of winning a special legislative election for a seat in a district that Trump carried by 27 points last fall.

“As chaos reigns in Washington, Democrats have a real opportunity to fight back in our state legislatures where there are winnable and chamber-deciding special elections nearly every single week,” said Williams, whose group gave $100,000 to the House DFL caucus ahead of the Roseville special election.

Gottfried said Thursday that the tie his election creates in the House “forces us to work across the aisle.” He said people in his district, which includes Shoreview and Roseville, “want to de-escalate the rhetoric and really want us to get to work.”

“We can provide a shield from the chaos in Washington,” he added.