State Legislatures and Redistricting

[Sam Spade]

Does anyone see any state legislatures within the next couple of years changing hands by the time district boundaries are redrawn? 

I'm sure a number of state legislatures will change hands this year.  And the districts are redrawn after this year.

[Sam Spade]

As posted on another thread, basically every GOP house seat the Dems took in Texas in the last 6 years fell tonight, including, amusingly, Solomon Ortiz, Jr.

[Sam Spade]

I'm wondering if PA-13 might be the eliminated district.  Westmoreland County is rapidly turning into East Prussia.    Since I grew up there, I'll have to change my screen name to J von J.  

You can't eliminate two Philadelphia districts in two successive redistrictings. The population doesn't support it.

A district in the west has to go. Likely PA-12. But I am curious what they'll do in the northeast and southeast. Maybe they can clean up PA-6.

Ya, the game is going to be to try and get Altmire and Critz to have to face each other.  Or maybe try and eliminate both, but that's riskier.

[Sam Spade]

Does anyone knows what happened with New York Senate?

Still R 30, D 29, 3 undetermined

From the NY Times...

SD 7 - Martins (R) leads Johnson (D) 51-49 (800 votes) with 98% in.  I get the impression most people think Johnson has lost.
SD 37 - Cohen (R) leads Oppenheimer (D) 52-48 with 81% in
SD 60 - Thompson (D) leads Grisanti (R) 50-50 (250 votes) with 99% in.  In the NYT article, they said that both parties expect Grisanti to win, though with these numbers, one wonders

[Sam Spade]

For some reason, Democratic control of the NY State Senate always seems cursed.

[Sam Spade]

The GOP in the Texas House will pick up either one or two seats this week, giving them a 2/3 supermajority.

In what way are they picking up seats? Run-off, party switches?

What does a 2/3 majority bring?

It's basically a done deal.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/12/will-republicans-claim-100th-s.html

Basically, it means that the Republicans can do anything procedurally.

In cross-referencing threads, what happened is that any Democrat outside of the major metro areas in Texas (or South Texas) who was not uncontested got beat, as Republicans encouraged the rural voters to vote straight-party, and they did.  You see, Democrats, prior to this election, still dominated local offices in all of these rural areas.  They got completely wiped out.  This has all Democrats left in these areas running scared (for obvious reasons).

Ritter's HD is 66% McCain.  Pena's HD is 77% Obama, so me no understand that one.  But the simple point, is that rural Texas Dems were eliminated, basically in one fell swoop, in this election.  That's the "real" realignment that Al mentioned.  Ritter is the last one in the Texas House.

The only other (sort of) one left is Eiland (McCain 53%), though that's really not rural district.  And Gallego (McCain 51%), but that district is strange.