Democrats lost a lot of ground in statehouses under Barack Obama’s presidency. In the 2018 midterms, they started to get some of it back — but they’ve still got a lot of catching up to do. Democrats took control of six state legislative chambers nationwide in Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
State legislatures Democrats have flipped so far in the 2018 elections
Things went well, but not exceptionally well, for Democrats.
Emily Stewart covered business and economics for Vox and wrote the newsletter The Big Squeeze, examining the ways ordinary people are being squeezed under capitalism. Before joining Vox, she worked for TheStreet.
Voters in 46 states cast their ballots for more than 6,000 state legislators on Tuesday. In multiple states, legislatures either flipped from Republican to Democratic-controlled or, in one state, went to Democrats from a split chamber.
Ahead of Election Day, Vox’s Dylan Scott laid out why state legislative elections are so important: They’re crucial for state-level policy debates on issues such as taxes, education, and health care, and they will also be key when officials start redrawing US congressional districts in 2020. Republican gerrymandering has put Democrats at a disadvantage in many states across the country, and Democrats getting more control of state legislatures could help them start to push back.
Per Scott: “It is no exaggeration to say that the 2018 state legislative races —and then the even more crucial 2020 elections — will help determine who controls the US House all the way through 2030.”
The results, for Democrats, were good, but not great. As the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) notes, the gains the party made were relatively modest compared to past midterms.
That’s not to say they weren’t meaningful. In Colorado, for example, Democrats now control the state Senate and maintained control of the House of Representatives, and Democrat Jared Polis won the governorship, giving the party the “trifecta” of power in the state.
There will also be a Democratic trifecta in New York after the party took back control of the state’s Senate. Democrats have numerically had the majority there already, but for years there had been a group of Democratic senators who had broken off to caucus together and team up with Republicans.
Here, according to data from the NCSL, are all the state legislatures that went to Democrats in 2018:
New Hampshire: Democrats retake both legislative chambers
It was a big night for Democrats in New Hampshire, where the party appears to have retaken both chambers of the state legislature for the first time in almost a decade. But the state won’t be under unified Democratic control, as Republican Gov. Chris Sununu won his reelection bid.
Democrats took control of the state’s Senate and held onto the state’s House of Representatives, and with Democrat Jared Polis in office, it will become one of 13 states entirely controlled by the Democratic Party. (For comparison, Republicans have the “trifecta” of power in 21 states.)
Prior to Tuesday, Connecticut’s state Senate was evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Not anymore. Democrats won the majority in the state Senate and picked up seats in the House, where it already had a majority.
Connecticut’s governor’s race still hasn’t been called.
Minnesota’s state House went to the Democrats on Tuesday, with the party gaining some 18 seats in the chamber. Its Senate, however, stayed with Republicans. According to NCSL, it’s the only state in the entire US where the legislature is divided.
Democrats needed to pick up at least one seat in Maine’s Senate, and they did. They also kept control of the state’s House, and Democratic Attorney General Janet Mills won the governorship. She will take over for Republican Gov. Paul LePage. Mills pledged to increase Medicaid access on the campaign trail, and with Democrats in charge of both legislative chambers, the path ahead on that front appears open.
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