University of Minnesota

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.

MnDOT has released five documents on its website relating specifically to the I-35W bridge (bridge number 9340) which we have packaged into a zip file (35 MB). The files include an outside consultant review, a University of Minnesota Civil Engineering field report, two brief status summary documents, and, most troubling, a MnDOT "Fracture Critical" engineering summary which reveals in candid descriptions and shocking photographs the deterioration of many critical bridge elements. Here's my summary of the relevant parts of the documents, which we posted in our special Bridge edition of the Weekly Report last Friday:

A 299-page draft report prepared for MnDOT by the URS Corporation of Minneapolis entitled, "Fatigue Evaluation and Redundancy Analysis" for Bridge No. 9340, released July 2006.