The 2020 Democratic Vote: State Legislature Redrawing and Elections for the Democrat, Republican, and Democratic Parties of the United States
The 2020 presidential vote was mapped onto the House map that was created after the recent census. He found that only a small number of the current districts voted in favor of Trump, while many voted for Joe Biden.
Gerrymandering is a real problem for American democracy, especially in the drawing of state legislature districts, as The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer recently documented. Some states, like North Carolina, are also likely to redraw their congressional maps even before 2030, especially if a coming Supreme Court case restricts the authority of state courts. If you were going to rank the current threats to American democracy, this wouldn’t be the top one.
The movement inside the Republican Party to refuse to accept defeat in an election would be No. 1. After that, in some order, would be the outsize and growing influence that the Senate gives to residents of small states; the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College; the lack of congressional representation for residents of Washington, D.C., and of Puerto Rico, many of whom are Black or Latino; and the existence of an ambitious Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court even though Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections.
Exactly one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House in November, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth as a multimillion-dollar avalanche of advertising has blanketed the top battleground states.
For almost two decades, midterm elections have been a succession of partisan waves: for Democrats in 2006, Republicans in 2010 and 2014, and Democrats again in 2018. The outcome of the next election is different than in the past, which is a reason for optimism for Democrats.
Three states in particular — Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania — that are seen as the likeliest to change party hands have emerged as the epicenter of the Senate fight with an increasing volume of acrimony and advertising. While campaigning and on the air, the two parties have very little in common other than disagreeing less over certain policies than they do about some of the problems facing the nation.
The Democrats excelled in Pennsylvania. They ran as well as Mr. Biden did. They won every seat. Mr. Biden had won the state but John Fetterman had won the race by a bigger margin. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, won in a landslide.
The pattern also helps explain some outliers in particular states. In Ohio, Representative Marcy Kaptur trounced her Republican opponent, J.R. Majewski, who had rallied at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and misrepresented his military service. In a district that Mr. Trump won in 2020, she won by 13 points. Almost every other Republican in House races in Ohio performed better than Mr. Trump had.
The most obvious differences appeared to be the abortion and democracy issues that were at stake, state by state. The Republicans in Pennsylvania nominated a candidate for governor who had been involved in trying to change the results of the presidential election. Democrats feared a Mastriano win could lead to a constitutional crisis and threaten democratic government. It may have threatened another right, since Mr. Mastriano was an opponent of abortion and the Legislature was controlled by Republicans.
It is possible to have exceptions, like Republican strength in Texas or Democratic strength in Colorado. Most of the most impressive showings fit together.
There’s the Republican landslide in Florida, where the stop-the-steal movement never sought to overturn an election result and where Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to go further than a 15-week abortion ban. There were victories by the Democrats in Kansas, where the abortion referendum was on the ballot at different times this year, and in Michigan, where they swept the most competitive House districts.
Who leads your state’s government shapes daily life in the United States. The governors and legislatures have policies on guns, abortion, education and the environment.
The professor of political science at UC San Diego said that where you live now is a factor in how policies are decided at the federal level.
In the close races, Democratic governors were usually the ones on the defense. Biden’s low approval ratings and inflation troubles led to fears of a “red wave.”
But many Democrats in tighter competitions won reelection: The other governors are Gov. Mills in Maine, the governor of Michigan, and the governor of New Mexico.
In Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers was re-elected. He will continue to work with a state legislature led by Republicans. Gov. Laura Kelly kept the governor’s office in Kansas, a state which former President Donald Trump won twice.
The party solidified its control in two states, where Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats. In both, the Democratic candidate won an open governorship that a Republican had vacated. Democrats now have complete control of state government. (When one single party controls the state house, state senate and governor’s office, it’s called a “trifecta.”) It will now be easier for the legislature to pass agenda items with a combination of Democrats and Republicans.
There will also be a Democratic trifecta in Oregon, where Democrat Tina Kotek emerged victorious on Thursday night out of a close race with Republican Christine Drazan.
Republicans held 28 state governorships, while Democrats held 22. Final results in a few states will affect the number.
No matter what, the majority of Americans “will be living in states where Democrats are governors” in 2023, due to their wins in high-population states, said Ben Williams of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), during a press call.
Around $50 million of the party’s money was spent by the two Democratically-aligned outside spending groups. Part of the mission was to make sure state legislatures did not work to overturn the results of the next presidential election, as many GOP lawmakers did in 2020.
The party has not held sway over the Michigan House or the Senate in four decades. That will give Democrats a clear path to enact their agenda items. She said in her victory speech that she would continue to fight for fundamental rights, as well as grow the economy and improve public education.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats also claim to have flipped the state House of Representatives, holding a press conference to announce their victory. In that chamber, state Rep. Joanna McClinton could be the first Black woman to become speaker of the Pennsylvania House.
The state Republican party has not conceded any of the races. “We believe Democrats claiming the majority at this time is premature and we are continuing to closely monitor a number of races where votes are still being counted,” Pennsylvania House GOP spokesperson Jason Gottesman told NPR.
The GOP may still pull off an upset in Nevada, a state that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Gov. Steve Sisolak is trailing Las Vegas area sheriff Joe Lombardo, a Republican, in his bid for reelection. The Associated Press has not yet called the race.
But in Arizona, where Republican Gov. Doug Ducey is term-limited, the race is too close to call. Lake and Hobbs are competing in a close race that’s still very close. Lake made false claims about the integrity of the election but did not say if she would accept the result if she lost.
Republicans held or strengthened their trifectas by picking up seats in Florida, the Iowa Senate and South Carolina’s House. The party has veto-proof majorities in Florida and Ohio. In these states, many conservative policy priorities have already been enacted or proposed, such as permitless gun carrying and restrictions on teaching about gender or sexuality in schools.
Democratic governors will still have veto power even though the GOP was not able to gain overwhelming majority in some states. Republicans gained a supermajority in the Wisconsin Senate, but not the Wisconsin House.
These governments are not very common. Kousser, the political scientist, said the red states have gotten less red and the blue state have gotten more blue since 2010.