Democrats won two vacant seats in the Minnesota House of Representatives on Tuesday, The Associated Press said, restoring that chamber to an even partisan split amid upheaval in the state over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The results were not unexpected. The districts are heavily Democratic, and in one of the races, the Democratic nominee was the only candidate on the ballot. Shelley Buck, a former president of the Prairie Island Indian Community’s Tribal Council, won one of the seats, and Meg Luger-Nikolai, a lawyer, won the other.
The seats, one in St. Paul and another in suburban St. Paul, became vacant after the Democrats who previously held them were elected to other offices in November. Assuming there are no other changes before Ms. Buck and Ms. Luger-Nikolai are sworn in, their elections will leave the Minnesota House with 67 Republicans and 67 Democrats.
Democrats hold a slim majority in the Minnesota State Senate, and the state’s governor, Tim Walz, is a Democrat. While the results on Tuesday denied Republicans an outright House majority, Democrats will still not be able to enact their policy agenda without Republican support.
The elections played out at an extraordinarily tense time in Minnesota. Federal immigration agents have flooded into the state in recent weeks, making thousands of arrests, clashing with protesters and fatally shooting two U.S. citizens. Alex Pretti, an intensive-care nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, was killed by federal agents on Saturday, and Renee Good, a poet and a mother of three, was killed by an agent earlier this month.
Local and state officials have repeatedly criticized the tactics of immigration agents and have filed a lawsuit claiming the surge of federal agents is unconstitutional. The Trump administration has criticized Minnesota Democrats for not cooperating more with immigration enforcement, as well as for a fraud scheme in state social service programs that played out on their watch.
A Minnesota Senate subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday about the impact of the federal immigration enforcement campaign. State lawmakers from across the country are also expected to visit the state this week.
Several legislative seats in Minnesota have been contested in special elections since the start of 2025 after the resignations and deaths of lawmakers, including State Representative Melissa Hortman, a Democrat who was fatally shot in June in what the authorities called an act of political violence.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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