State Legislative Elections

[Verily]

I believe the seat the Constitution Party won was only won by the Democrats last time because of vote-splitting between the Republican and Constitutionalist, so it's not that surprising that they lost it this year. Still, it will be interesting to see if Montanans prefer a GOP Senate and House even though Schweitzer and the Democrats did an amazing job there.

[Gustaf]

To an extent, it has to be kept in mind that Schweitzer probably carried the Democratic party in Montana with him in 2004. Without him on the ballot I'd imagine things to be harder for the Dem party there.

[Nym90]

In IL the Dem's definitely picked up 4 Senate seats. That becomes interesting since with 36 votes (vs. 23 R) the Dems have a veto-proof majority there. Though the Gov is also a D, there has been some disagreement between the Dems in the legislature and Gov over the last four years. This may add an interesting twist.

There appears to be a gain of 1 House seat for the House Dems putting them at 66 - 52. There are two races where the margin is less than 200 votes and each party currently leads in one. These may take a couple weeks to sort out while counting absentee and provisional ballots.

Muon, am I to assume you won your race?

Yep, I got just over 60%. I'm still sorting through the precinct data. I'll post a map when I've got it all.

Congratulations on your victory! Hopefully you can work constructively with the party leadership on both sides and Gov. Blagojevich to get things done.

[socaldem]

I believe the seat the Constitution Party won was only won by the Democrats last time because of vote-splitting between the Republican and Constitutionalist, so it's not that surprising that they lost it this year. Still, it will be interesting to see if Montanans prefer a GOP Senate and House even though Schweitzer and the Democrats did an amazing job there.

Exactly... The Democrat beat the Constitution party candidate last time with only about 1/3 of the vote and by some 6 votes (after the Courts stepped in to demand that all ballots be counted).  So, the incumbant Dem's loss there is hardly unexpected.

I am, however, a little disappointed that Dems lost two seats in the senate.   The Burns-Tester race, however, probably drove lots of hardcore GOPers to the polls and with such a close win Tester didn't really have any coattails. 

I imagine Dems will make up some ground with the inevitable Schweitzer landslide in '08.

[socaldem]

By the way, Dems lost one state senate race in California.

Democratic candidate Lou Correa lost the heavily Latino central Orange County (Santa Ana/Anaheim) seat of retiring state senator Joe Dunn to moderate Republican state assemblywoman Lynn Dauscher by just over 500 votes out of more than 80,000 cast.  Note that this district overlaps with Congresswoman Sanchez' district where her opponent sent out a nasty mailer to try to supress the Latino vote.  Dauscher had been opposed by some hardline conservative bloggers as too moderate and Correa won a nasty primary over Dem assemblyman Tom Umberg who was tainted by an admission of marital infidelity.

The incumbents won all other contests, though a few were close:

-Assemblywoman Nicole Parra barely won reelection in her heavily Latino Southern Central Valley district.  She won by less than 1500 votes out of 50000 cast.  She is term-limited so the seat will be open in '08.  However, that might actually bring an improvement for Dems because Parra is somewhat of a divisive figure.  The GOP candidate for this district this year, however, did not get much support and if the GOP actually had a good candidate here, they might be able to pull it off.


--Cathleen Gagliani easily held AD 17, a Stockton/Merced County swing district over GOPer Gerard Machado.  Since she won so handily in an open seat, I expect she'll hold the seat for 3 terms.

-Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia held on to her heavily Democratic Eastern Riverside County/Imperial county 80th district.  She faced underfunded Democrat Steve Clute.  She will be forced to retire because of term limits and Democrats should pick up the seat.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Map of the WV House elections:



Not that a lot of districts elect more than one member and that some districts have members from both parties (usually a single Republican and several Democrats).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

WV State Senate now:



Half the seats were up this year, the other half next year.

Interestingly enough, the Democratic State Senator who's re-election campaign was nearly ended by the airing of some photos of him and some other men only wearing bodypaint was re-elected in the 11th.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Kentucky House:

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Michigan House:

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Georgia now:



Some of the defectors seem to have run unopposed.

[socaldem]

So, yeah, an update from California.

Orange County Democrat seems to have pulled ahead of Republican Lynn Dauscher in the 34th state senate district in Orange County now that outstanding provisional ballots have been counted.  He now leads by 282 votes.

If Lou Correa retains his margin, Democrats will have not lost any seats in the legislature this year.  Moreover, not a single seat will have changed party control in the state legislature since the incumbent-protecting redistricting was passed in 2002.

[jimrtex]

Texas House

Texas is Big

[Alcon]

TX-85 almost looks sort of like a swastika.

Still counting.  Where are you all getting such excellent legislative outline maps?  GIS?

[jimrtex]

TX-85 almost looks sort of like a swastika.

As you may know, the district was Pete Laney's.  In 2001, the legislature failed to redistrict, and under the Texas Constitution, legislative redistricting  is then done by the Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB), comprised of the Lt.Governor (Bill Ratliff), the House Speaker (Laney), Attorney General (now Sen. Cornyn), Comptroller (Rylander/Strayhorn), Land Commissioner (now Lt. Governor Dewhurst).

This was a 4-1 GOP majority, with Cornyn acting as chairman and Laney on the sidelines.

Under the Texas Constitution (as interpreted by court cases), counties with a population smaller than one representative may not be split.  In West Texas, there are a number of counties with population in the 80-94% range (Potter & Randall - Amarillo; Wichita - Wichita Falls; Taylor - Abilene; Tom Green - San Angelo; Midland - Midland; Ector - Odessa) which must be combined with a number small counties attached to these larger cores.  Lubbock County has a population slightly less than 2 districts, so it must have one whole district, and the remnant treated liked the other mid-sized counties (Texas House districts average about 139,000 in population).  After you use up the population for the 9 districts with a mid-sized core, then there is population enough for 4 rural districts, which are the districts in the eastern Panhandle; along the Red River wrapping around Wichita Falls; in the Hill Country; and Laney's.

As the LRB was considering the GOP proposal, an amendment was offered that would extend TX-85 further south.  Laney said something like, "this is getting a bit personal"; to which Cornyn responded, "Touché".

This may have led Laney to queer the congressional districts drawn by a Texas district court.  Since the legislature also failed to redistrict the congressional districts, this ended up in both state and federal courts.  The state court produced a most reasonable map based on ideas by Lt.Governor Ratliff.   The state district judge, then said I'm going to make a few minor changes at the request of Speaker Laney (he was a Democrat judge - because the Democrats had filed in his district, sooner than the Republicans had filed elsewhere).  The Texas Supreme Court threw out the revised state district court plan.  Since there was no valid state plan, the federal district court then started with the last legal plan the 1991/1996 Frostrocity and drew their map, which was replaced in 2003 by the Legislature.

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Texas Redistricting Site - Legislative Council
At the lower right corner is a link to their FTP site which has ESRI "shp" files for the various districts.

I use a program called Global Mapper which in free mode can do projections (shp files are typically in latitude-longitude decimal degrees) and has various options for rendering boundaries, and you can scale maps.  So it is sufficient for creating base maps.  I use a program called PixWizard to do a screen capture create .bmp files.  In this case, I did one capture for the state, and then set Global Mapper to a larger scale and panned to the various areas to create the maps for the largest counties.  I also did a screen capture to get the color scale.   I used Microsoft Paint to color the maps and merge the detailed maps, and PixWizard to convert to a .png format (which is much smaller).

Incidentally, the Census Bureau has lots of .shp files for all the census geography (except blocks).  They have legislative districts(at least some states), but they are as they existed in April 2000 at the time of the Census, before redistricting.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

[jimrtex]

Texas Senate

In the first election after redistricting (eg 2002, all senate seats are contested).  When the senate meets, lots are drawn to determine which senators will serve a 2-year term (2003-2005) and which will serve a 4-year term (2003-2007).  The districts in the first class will then have elections in 2002, 2004, and 2008, for terms of 2, 4, and 4 years.  The districts in the second class will have elections in 2002, 2006, and 2010 for terms of 4, 4, and 2 years.

On the maps below, a green square indicates the seats that were "contested" in 2004.  The yellow square indicates the GOP pick-up (where the Democrat incumbent retired, and the Democrat nominee withdrew).

Very few seats had Democrat-Republican contests.  Over the two elections, there were 8 GOP unopposed; 5 GOP-Libertarian races; 5 Democrats unopposed; 1 Dem-Libertarian race; and 1 Dem-Libertarian-mistress race.

Of the remaining races, Republicans won 7 and Democrats 4.

Texas is Big

[Sam Spade]

Most of those rural legislators are quite conservative Democrats, but if you want that, go right on ahead. 

[jimrtex]

Most of those rural legislators are quite conservative Democrats, but if you want that, go right on ahead. 

Do they have Tory Democrats anywhere but Texas?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

PA House

[Keystone Phil]

PA House

102-101  GOP      I can proudly say that I played a good part in why one vulnerable Montco seat stayed GOP.

[bullmoose88]

My old State Rep...matt wright lost in the 142nd, thats the bright red...now middletown is entirely represented by dems. Sigh.

I live in one of the few unfortunate middletown wards in the 141st...tony melio land.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Where are you guys getting the blank maps for these?

I'd do Minnesota if Iknew where to get any.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Your state legislature has an excellent GIS resources page, with one thing missing... GIS files

http://www.gis.leg.mn/

[Alcon]

Your state legislature has an excellent GIS resources page, with one thing missing... GIS files

http://www.gis.leg.mn/

http://www.commissions.leg.state.mn.us/gis/html/download.htm

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Your state legislature has an excellent GIS resources page, with one thing missing... GIS files

http://www.gis.leg.mn/

http://www.commissions.leg.state.mn.us/gis/html/download.htm

Well aren't you just Mr. Link finder, Alcoun