State Legislatures and Redistricting

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I did a ranking of legislatures on SSP a while back, here it is (with a few minor alterations):


Dem-held chambers

Lean Republican takeover

Indiana House (Currently 52/48)
Pennsylvania House (Currently 104/99)

Tossup

Alabama Senate (Currently 21/14) and House (Currently 60/45)
Iowa House (Currently 56/44)
Montana House (Currently 50/50)
New Hampshire Senate (Currently 14/10) and House (Currently 223/176)
New York Senate (Currently 32/30)
North Carolina Senate (Currently 30/20) and House (Currently 68/52)
Ohio House (Currently 53/46)
Wisconsin Senate (Currently 18/15) and House (Currently 52/46/1)

Lean Democratic

Colorado Senate (Currently 21/14) and House (Currently 37/27/1)
Delaware House (Currently 24/17)
Iowa Senate (Currently 32/18)
Maine Senate (Currently 20/15)

Likely Democratic

Michigan House (Currently 66/43)
Nevada Senate (Currently 12/9)
Oregon Senate (Currently 18/12) and House (Currently 36/24)

Safe Democratic

Arkansas Senate (Currently 27/8) and House (Currently 72/28)
California Senate (Currently 25/14) and House (Currently 49/29/1)
Connecticut Senate (Currently 24/12) and House (Currently 114/37)
Delaware Senate (Currently 15/6)
Hawaii Senate (Currently 23/2) and House (Currently 45/6)
Illinois Senate (Currently 37/22) and House (Currently 70/48)
Kentucky House (Currently 65/35)
Maine House (Currently 95/55/1)
Maryland Senate (Currently 33/14) and House (Currently 104/36/1)
Massachusetts Senate (Currently 34/4) and House (Currently 144/16)
Minnesota Senate (Currently 46/21) and House (Currently 87/47)
Nevada House (Currently 28/14)
New Mexico House (Currently 45/25)
New York House (Currently 106/42/2)
Rhode Island Senate (Currently 33/4/1) and House (Currently 69/6)
Vermont Senate (Currently 22/7/1) and House (Currently 94/48/8)
Washington Senate (Currently 31/18) and House (Currently 61/37)
West Virginia Senate (Currently 26/8) and House (Currently 69/31)

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R held chambers

Lean Republican

Alaska Senate (Currently 10/10) and House (Currently 18/22)
Michigan Senate (Currently 16/22)
Montana Senate (Currently 23/27)

Likely Republican

Kentucky Senate (Currently 17/20/1)

Safe Republican

Arizona Senate (Currently 12/18) and House (Currently 24/36)
Florida Senate (Currently 14/26) and House (Currently 44/75)
Georgia Senate (Currently 22/34) and House (Currently 74/105/1)
Idaho Senate (Currently 7/28) and House (Currently 18/52)
Indiana Senate (Currently 17/33)
Kansas House (Currently 49/76)
Missouri Senate (Currently 11/23) and House (Currently 74/89)
North Dakota Senate (Currently 21/26) and House (Currently 35/58)
Ohio Senate (Currently 12/21)
Oklahoma Senate (Currently 22/26) and House (Currently 39/62)
Pennsylvania Senate (Currently 20/30)
South Carolina House (Currently 52/72)
South Dakota Senate (Currently 14/21) and House (Currently 24/46)
Tennessee Senate (Currently 14/19) and House (Currently 48/50/1)
Texas Senate (Currently 12/19) and House (Currently 73/77)
Utah Senate (Currently 8/20) and House (Currently 22/53)
Wyoming Senate (Currently 7/23) and House (Currently 19/41)

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N/A

Kansas Senate - not up in 2010
Louisiana Senate/House - not up in 2010
Mississippi Senate/House - not up in 2010
Nebraska Unicameral - nonpartisan
New Jersey Senate/House - not up in 2010
New Mexico Senate - not up in 2010
South Carolina Senate - not up in 2010
Virginia - not up in 2010

[JohnnyLongtorso]

A long time ago.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

With the primaries finished, and with less than two weeks until election day, is anyone changing their predictions with regard to state legislatures? 

Looking at my list from the other month, I'd say that the Republicans run the board as far as the tossups are concerned, except for possibly the New York Senate and one/both houses in North Carolina. I'd also bump the Michigan House down to Lean Dem.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

With the primaries finished, and with less than two weeks until election day, is anyone changing their predictions with regard to state legislatures? 

Looking at my list from the other month, I'd say that the Republicans run the board as far as the tossups are concerned, except for possibly the New York Senate and one/both houses in North Carolina. I'd also bump the Michigan House down to Lean Dem.

Do you expect Republicans to make gains in both houses of the North Carolina legislature, even if they don't win either house outright?  This is the South, after all, and in a year like this I fully expect them to run strongest in this region, from congressional to gubernatorial to state legislative races. 

Absolutely, I'm just not sure whether they can win both houses. They recruited candidates for every Dem seat in the Senate but left several House seats uncontested.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Republican pickups (though not all affect redistricting, of course):

Alabama House and Senate
Colorado House (possibly, NCSL still has it out)
Indiana House
Iowa House
Maine House and Senate
Michigan House
Minnesota House and Senate (WTF?!)
Montana House
New Hampshire House and Senate
North Carolina House and Senate
Ohio House
Pennsylvania House
Wisconsin Assembly and Senate

Oregon's House looks like it'll be thin, it's currently 28-28 with 4 seats left. The Oregon Senate is possibly going to be a 15-15 tie.

Amusingly, it looks like the Republicans are down to only one seat in the Hawaii Senate.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Dems still have the Iowa Senate, although just barely.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Dems dodged a bullet in Missouri -- Republicans came up just short of a 2/3rds majority in the legislature.

Some general state legislative observations:

Reports of the Democrats' demise in West Virginia seem to be premature; they actually gained seats in the State Senate, though they lost a few in the House. Other surprising gains: Democrats appear to have picked up two seats in the Maryland Senate, in Frederick and on the Eastern Shore.

Worst result for the Dems where it doesn't matter: Wyoming Senate, now 26-4 Republican.

Surprisingly, Alaska Senate remains split 10/10.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Can anyone with knowledge of Arkansas politics predict would have happened if the GOP had nominated candidates everywhere? Apparently, they lost all seven contested state Senate races. I can't imagine the difference between the strongest contested Democratic seat and the weakest uncontested seat being all that large, so fail for the Arkansas GOP.

They also netted 17 seats in the House, bringing them to 45-55 there, and picked up the three statewide posts they contested. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Dems would've been royally screwed if the Republicans managed to put up candidates for more seats. Remember that a lot of Democrats in Arkansas are essentially Republicans anyway, so it probably doesn't change the ideological balance in the legislature, just the partisan balance.

With the 2010 elections out of the way (for the most part), which of the following chambers does anyone here see switching parties in 2011?

Louisiana Senate (D: 23, R: 16)
Louisiana House (D: 51, R: 50, I: 4)

Mississippi Senate (D: 27, R: 25)
Mississippi House (D: 72, R: 50)

Virginia Senate (D: 22, R: 18)
Virginia House (R: 59, D: 39, I: 2)

New Jersey Senate (D: 23, R: 17)
New Jersey House (D: 47, R: 33)

Louisiana goes Republican -- the redistricting committee in the Senate is stacked with Republicans, from what I've heard. It should be just as bad as the rest of the South. So does Mississippi. Heck, I've been predicting both of those for a while now.

Virginia House isn't going to get any better for the Dems; they might win back a few seats they lost in 2009, but redistricting is going to cause them to lose seats elsewhere (SWVA is definitely losing seats, I'm hearing that Hampton Roads will lose one as well). The Senate is tough, because there's literally no seat left that they have a chance at picking up, even before redistricting; 2007 was their best shot at winning seats, and the three or four that they came close to winning but missed are just too Republican for them to have any chance at in 2011. Republicans, on the other hand, need 2 seats to win control, and there are plenty of tempting targets: Phil Puckett, John Miller, Edd Houck, Roscoe Reynolds, Mark Herring, and George Barker.

No idea on New Jersey.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Maine actually redistricts after the 2012 election. Will any/all legislative seats be up for election in 2012?

Yes, the entire legislature is up every 2 years.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

The Maryland pickups were weird -- a seat on the lower Eastern Shore, definitely not ground zero for Democratic strength, and one in Frederick County, where Ehrlich won double-digits.

Delaware Dems picked up three seats in New Castle County and lost one in Kent. The O'Donnell/Urquhart ticket killed the Republicans in New Castle County; they're down to 5/26 of the NCC house seats. They did pick up a Senate seat in Kent county, though, so the NCC/lower two counties split is growing.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Just to clear up what's happened with the New York Senate: prior to the election, it was 32-30 for the Dems. Four seats have been confirmed as switching parties:

SD-3 - Brian Foley (D) defeated
SD-11 - Frank Padavan (R) defeated
SD-38 - open (R) seat won by D
SD-48 - Darrell Aubertine (D) defeated

In addition, three seats haven't been called yet:

SD-7 - Craig Johnson (D) down by 400 votes
SD-37 - Suzi Oppenheimer (D) up by 500 votes
SD-60 - Antoine Thompson (D) down by 500 votes

So if all of these vote totals hold true, the Republicans will retake control 32-30.

Amazingly, Democrats managed to hold the open SD-58 seat in Erie County.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Oregon Senate looks like it will be retained by the Dems. It looks like it's 16-14 now; I see two Dem seats the Republicans are leading, SD-20 (currently occupied by Kurt Schrader's wife) and SD-26. I'm guessing the third pickup would've been SD-3, but the Democrat has pulled ahead there by about 250 votes.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

SD-60 - Antoine Thompson (D) down by 500 votes

Just looked at the map of this district and ... what?

Did this guy have some sort of scandal, or did the blacks on Buffalo's east side just epically fail to turn out?

Some cursory Googling suggests that Thompson was a miserable failure of a representative.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

http://www.nysenate.gov/district/60

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Maybe they'll just add a seat again, like they did in 2000. At least then it'd be an odd number again, so no ties.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

HD-86 in Virginia is held by a Republican; it went 62-37 for Obama. There was also that district in Delaware that went Republican in a special election right after the election, but the Dems won it back this year.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

The only significant states where the Dems had the trifecta in 2000 were Alabama, California (irrelevant, since they just did an incumbent protection map), Georgia (undone in 2005), Maryland, and North Carolina. The Republicans had Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I don't want to go through all the state legislatures, but I just looked at the Alabama Senate, and the Democratic caucus is now 8 black members, 4 whites. Only one of the white members won easily this year, he has a seat that's partially in the black belt. Interestingly, one of the African-American members is a freshman who was elected to a white-majority area in the NW corner of the state.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

The redistricting panel in Ohio only does the state legislature. Congressional districts are drawn in the usual legislature + governor veto manner.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Louisiana is redistricting next year for the 2011 elections, same as Virginia. I believe New Jersey is doing the same, and I can't find anything on Mississippi, except that last time they didn't adopt new maps until spring of 2002.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Virginia's primary is normally in June, but they move it to August in redistricting years.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Traditionally, each house of the legislature draws its own maps in Virginia, so there may be a Democratic gerrymander for the Senate and a Republican one for the House.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Four Dems in the Alabama House are switching to the Republicans. Shocking.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I really don't care, I don't know what sort of agenda the Alabama Republican party would wanna pass that's already not implemented anyway. Unless they wanna go the way of Oklahoma and start banning Sharia law. But I don't understand...

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What was this guy's margin of victory? Because it sounds like he cares more about what the state as a whole wants than who his district wants. It's like a Republican Californian assembly person or senator changing to Democrat after this election where Democrats swept everything... southern Democrats are weird. Power obsessed?

He was unopposed, as was Boothe. Hurst won by 3, and Vance won by 9.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Two more Democratic state legislators (this time, senators) in Louisiana have just switched to the GOP.  Before long, the entire Louisiana legislature will be under Republican control with just a few more defections.

It's now 20-18 in the Senate with a vacancy (a D-to-I switcher resigned, apparently) that the Republicans are expected to win in January.

One of the party switchers was at least honest about why: he wants to be the Senate President.