GOP

The DFL and the GOP continued to exchange Minnesota House seats as the election results trickled in early Wednesday morning.

The DFL House Caucus is poised to add two seats to its majority, said caucus communications director Andrew Wittenborg. That would give DFLers 87 out of 134 House seats. But that’s short of the 90 seats they need in order to have a veto-proof majority.

Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, was narrowly defeated with all precincts reporting by the early morning hours. Erickson, the lead Republican on the House Education Finance Committee, lost to Gail Jackson by a difference of 50.12 percent to 49.67 percent.

In District 41B, a seat held by Rep. Neil Peterson, R-Bloomington, DFLer Paul Rosenthal beat Jan Schneider 52.56 percent to 47.01 percent. Peterson lost in the September primary to Schneider. Peterson drew criticism from his own party after he voted to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of this year’s transportation finance bill.

A Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs/Minnesota Public Radio poll over the weekend found that state Democrats have increased their edge over Republicans as they try to expand their majority in the state House of Representatives in Tuesday’s election.

Forty-nine percent of likely voters in Minnesota told the survey they prefer Democratic candidates in state legislative races. Thirty-three percent surveyed said they prefer Republicans.

The 16-point lead for DFLers is a “slight increase” from their 11-point lead on Oct. 4, according to the poll’s findings.

The poll doesn’t predict how particular districts will be decided. But Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Humphrey’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, said the results indicate that broad, unrelated events like President Bush’s approval ratings and the economic downturn are hurting Republicans’ chances in down-ballot contests.