Southwest Minneapolis' voters participated in an historic election on Tuesday.

President Barack Obama was re-elected. Minnesota became the first state to reject a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and woman. Voters also stopped an amendment requiring voters show photo ID at the polls. The DFL took control of both houses of the state legislature.

They even got to see Mayor RT Rybak crowd-surf at the official DFL election party in reaction to Obama's victory (See video at right).

Initially, Southwest Minneapolis' high voter turnout caused long lines at some polling places, and a few ballot scanners had hiccoughs. As the night war on, voters waited on tenterhooks to find out how their community voted—many Minneapolis precincts did not report results until after midnight. 

As more and more Hennepin County precincts reported in, however, it became clear that Minneapolis had helped to re-elect Obama, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Keith Ellison, and helped stop both amendments. 

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National Election Results / Hennepin County Election Results / 5th Congressional District Election Results / Constitutional Amendment Results

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Southwest Minneapolis' legislators held on to their seats despite the efforts of a crop of local libertarian-leaning Republicans.

Perhaps most prominent among this group was Nate Atkins, who ran under the moniker "Honey Badger,"  after the internet meme. In his 2010 run against Rep. Paul Thissen (DFL-61B), he garnered just over 29% of the vote, but only managed 18 percent this election. In an October interview Atkins told Patch that he had faced difficulties getting money and support from the state Republican Party, blaming socially conservative donors and power brokers.

No city offices were up for election this year. However, Southwest Minneapolis voters elected one district-based school board member and one citywide at-large board member. Tracine Asberry ran unopposed for the Sixth District seat, while incumbent Carla Bates faced off and won against dark horse candidate Doug Mann, and a write-in campaign mounted by Eli Kaplan. In her last election in 2008, Bates took almost 20 percent in a six-way city-wide race that elected three at-large board members. Mann emerged from the same contest with a bit over 10 percent of the vote. This time around, Bates took 72 percent of the vote, Mann took 25 percent, and write-in candidates (presumably including Kaplan) took almost two percent.

Outside of Southwest Minneapolis Patch's coverage area, Josh Reimnitz holds a narrow lead over teachers' union-backed candidate Patty Wycoff for the District 4 seat on the Minneapolis school board. Final election results have not yet been declared, as defective ballots were delivered to three precincts in the Uptown area. According to a written statement from a City of Minneapolis spokesperson, the ballot defects did not impair voters' ability to mark ballots and were almost imperceptible to the human eye, but they made it impossible for ballot-scanning machines to process the paper.

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RESULTS 

*Candidates with asterisks before their names are incumbents.

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Looking for more election results?

National Election Results / Hennepin County Election Results / 5th Congressional District Election Results / Constitutional Amendment Results