Boston, MA – November 5: I Voted stickers are available for voters at the Richard J. Murphy School. (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Republicans ended up flipping, maintaining control of, or expanding their majority in nearly all of the state legislative chambers across the country where partisan control was up for grabs on Election Day.
With the final votes largely tallied in key state House and Senate races across the country, the results provide the GOP with yet another slate of success — on top of the party winning full control of Washington — that will likely help to determine the future of several hot-button policy issues.
According to projections from The Associated Press, Republicans flipped control of the Michigan state House, padded their narrow majorities in the New Hampshire state House and Senate, and maintained their majority in the Pennsylvania state Senate.
In Arizona, Republicans appeared poised to expand their narrow majorities in the state House and state Senate, though the AP hasn’t yet called enough races to make that determination.
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In the Minnesota state House, where Democrats had been defending a narrow majority, Republicans appeared to have picked up three seats, resulting in a tie in the chamber, though two close races are headed to recounts. Democrats won a Minnesota state Senate special election to keep control of the chamber.
In Minnesota and Michigan, the results in the state Houses amounted to a rebuke of Democrats’ trifecta of power in each state. In many districts in both states, Democrats had centered their message on the accomplishments the party achieved with that power.
Democrats, however, maintained their 102-101 majority in the Pennsylvania state House — the only bright spot for the party in state legislative chambers where partisan control had been at stake.
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Those outcomes closely mirrored national trends of largely across-the-board Republican success on Election Day.
“It is clear that Republicans were the definitive winners across the ballot in this nationwide election,” Republican State Leadership Committee President Dee Duncan said in a statement. “Despite facing an unprecedented onslaught of spending from a constellation of national liberal outside groups and being forced to navigate a difficult political climate, we managed to achieve our goal of maintaining control in a majority of state legislatures across the country.”
While state legislative races typically take on a more local flavor, both parties leaned heavily into national issues this year — not least of all because many of the most critical contests took place in presidential swing states.
For Democrats, that meant putting abortion rights at the forefront of many of their races, while Republicans emphasized the economy, immigration, crime and what they deemed parents’ rights.
In addition, Republicans’ victories in state legislative races came even as Democratic groups massively outspent them.
Democratic outside groups including the States Project, Forward Majority and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee spent at least $175 million on state legislative races across a total of nine states this cycle.
By comparison, the RSLC spent about $50 million this cycle, with no major expenditures from outside GOP-affiliated groups.
In a statement, the States Project’s co-founders Daniel Squadron and Adam Pritzker called the overall legislative results “challenging,” while also bringing attention to Democrats “notching important wins … despite the difficult political environment.” The group spent $70 million on state legislative races this cycle.
The statement was in reference to Democrats making gains in legislative chambers in two states, North Carolina and Wisconsin, where they sought to cut into the massive advantages held by Republicans.
In Wisconsin — where new legislative maps were expected to shift the balance of power in a Legislature that has been dominated by Republicans for more than a decade — Democrats picked up at least 10 seats in the state Assembly and at least three seats in the state Senate, according to the AP.
Those gains eliminated any possibility of a GOP supermajority in the Legislature, giving Democrats the ability to prevent any vetoes by Gov. Tony Evers from being overridden by Republicans.
And in North Carolina, Democrats also won enough seats to break up Republicans’ supermajority, giving Democratic Gov.-elect Josh Stein crucial veto power over the conservative Legislature.
But in Kansas, where Democratic-aligned groups aimed to cut into the GOP’s legislative edge, the attempt fell short. Republicans are on track to pad their supermajority in the Kansas Legislature, according to the AP.
Democrats also lost their legislative supermajorities in New York and Vermont, according to AP projections, while Republicans gained one in South Carolina.
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