By the numbers: Digging into Minnesota House data

Digging into the data from the House election last week, we came up with some interesting tidbits.

Read on:

Edina represents

More voters in the tony Hennepin County suburban of Edina voted in the Minnesota House race than voters of any other district. Nearly 20,000 people cast ballots for the two candidates vying for the 47A seat. Democratic Rep. Ron Erhardt, a former Republican member of the House, bested Republican candidate Dario Anselmo garnering 51 percent of the vote.

Hello, St. Paul?

Just four miles from the Minnesota Capitol, voters in St. Paul's 67A gave the House race a pass. Fewer than 7,500 voters cast ballots in that House race. DFL Rep. Tim Mahoney, who has long represented that St. Paul district, still did well. He got 72 percent of the vote, or 5,400 votes, for a vote total and a vote percentage that bested most of his colleagues.

You're the tops

Most votes: Rep. Jim Davnie, DFL-Minneapolis. He had a Republican opponent but still received 15,026 votes, more than any other House candidate.

Writing

In southern Minnesota, 459 voters of House District 23B wrote in candidate names, more write-in votes than any other districts. The high number may not be surprising – Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, was unopposed so voters there had the choice of voting for him or penciling in another option. The write-ins were little blow to Cornish's vote total. He won 11,339 votes, or 96 percent of the votes in the House race.

Just three

Minnesota-House Speaker Designate Kurt Daudt will start his term in January with only three terms under his belt. He is the first speaker with that little seniority since the 1930, according to figures compiled by the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.

Current House Speaker Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, was selected by his DFL colleagues last week to lead them in the minority next year. It's a role that's familiar to him. He was the DFL's minority leader from 2011 to 2012 and became speaker in 2013, when the DFL took over the House. The reference library could find just one other case of a leader making that journey -- Aubrey Dirlam did it about 40 years ago. But, the library found, unlike Thissen, there was a time gap between when he served as minority leader then speaker then minority leader again.

Flip-flop-flip

In 2008, Democrats won the House. In 2010, Republican took it over. In 2012, Democrats took it back. And in 2014, it flipped to Republicans again. The quick turnaround of party power -- four times in four election cycles -- is the speediest the Star Tribune could find on record.

Photo: Archive photo of House Speaker Paul Thissen speaking to Minority Leader Kurt Daudt in 2014. Next year, Daudt will be speaker and Thissen will be minority leader. Source: Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune.