The list, so far:
Here’s a full list of the state legislative chambers flipped by Republicans on Tuesday: Alabama House and Senate, Colorado Senate, Indiana House, Iowa House, Maine House and Senate, Minnesota House and Senate, Michigan House, Montana House, New Hampshire House and Senate, North Carolina House and Senate, Ohio House, Pennsylvania House and Wisconsin House and Senate.
Additionally, the New York state Senate is looking bad.
New York really needs to change the state constitution on either giving the Lt. Governor a tie breaking vote on everything or adding an additional Senate seat so the total Senate total is odd and a tie is impossible. Kinda of afraid of more shenanigans if this doesn’t happen.
Alabama: No real effect on redistricting; what else do they have to go after? Hopefully, Democrats will litigate to get another VRA district.
Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania: Already Republican gerrymanders.
Wisconsin: That’s not good. I don’t know how much damage they can do, but still not good.
Minnesota: Hopefully, Dayton pulls it out.
Montana: No redistricting effect; at-large seat.
Colorado, New Hampshire, and North Carolina: Democratic governors.
Indiana: How much more damage can they do? Going after anymore would be a dummymander.
Iowa: Who controls the Senate?
Not bad, really. Quite an achievement…
But i have a qestion to experts. I tried to look at state chambers from geographical point of view. In the Midwest it was almost universally very bad for Democrats – even (as in Illinois) they preserved a majority< they lost a lot of seats. In West – almost universally (except, may be, Washington and Oregon, but there Democrats won a lot of districts in 2006-08 so some Republican gains could be expected)much less change. So far – all good and well
But 2 other regions – …. Look at the South: Republican tsunami in Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina (less so, but still very good for Republicans – Oklahoma and Tennessee). And at the same time – nary a difference in Florida, Georia and South Carolina. Why??? The history and political tradition of, say North and South Carolina are, generally, similar enough…
New England: well, southern part is “normal” – some gains, but not much for Republicans in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts (lower house), but northern part – again ……. Nary a movement in Vermont, big Republican gains in Maine and, probably,the biggest tsunami of all in New Hampshire. In, again, generally similar states. Of course i know, that Vermont is the most liberal of 3, and that New Hampshire hates taxes (with Maine – somewhere “in between”), so i would easily understand some difference, but such big difference??????
both houses in Nevada and Washington; in Florida, they passed that constitutional amendment where the legislature has to follow geographic boundaries and not explicitly favor political parties. And in Texas, Republicans won’t have much choice but to put the 4 new districts in the places where the population growth is: urban areas.
Hundreds of Democratic up-and-comers were sent to defeat. When you think about Congrssional candidates in ’12 and beyond, how often are the strong ones “State Senator” or “State Rep”? Very often in my book. Hopefully the stronger survived, but we know that’s not always how it works on the regional/local level. And now the Republicans have deeper benches in 44 out of 45 states (I think CA is the only one where the Republicans didn’t post a net gain of total seats of those states, NJ/VA/LA/MS had no regular elections and NE is always cloudy.) This is more concerning than redistricting, to me, because it cuts across everywhere, even where we have control of both chambers.
Democrats held onto the State Senate.
LePage with both chambers at his command. Gosh, sorry Maine your screwed.
First off Maine
I really don’t see what they really could do redistricting wise to really screw with our two representatives.
Ohio
Honestly I’d like to see the republicans try to eliminate two democrats while simultaneously holding the 5 seats they just won. They’d be setting themselves up for quite a dummymander.
I think they will still have to cede a seat or two for us.
They will be protecting all of these new incumbents in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan and drawing out Democrats in North Carolina. That is going to make it so Democrats cant win a House majority again until 2022. Democrats need to fight for non-partisan redistricting rules everywhere like what passed in Florida and California.
because this election shows hown devestating that can be. Why did the GOP smash in PA, OH, FL, and MI. Because those districts were drawn to elect republicans in good years. Now they can update them and strengthen those seats. In the midwest most of the urban seats have lost population (philly, Detroit, clev, Gary) so the GOP will be able to pack more dem precincts into those seats.
One reason NC held up so well was because the Democrat Gerrymander protected them.
Most importantly with these states losing seats the GOP gets to pick who goes down. Ohio will be losing two and it’s going to be ugly with incumbants running against each other.
At least we have a seat at the table, amirite?
I was just going over the results from the Minnesota State Senate and while Republicans held a 37-30 advantage in seats won their advantage in total votes was less than 1% and that includes two districts where the Republican ran unopposed (No Democrats ran unopposed). The problem in Minnesota like a lot of places is Democrats are packed into the urban cores so they win those districts with wide margins but lose many of the other districts by smaller margins. There where 10 districts Democrats won by over 40 points in the Minnesota Senate, the only two districts Republicans won by over 40 points were the 2 they ran unopposed.
BTW I have not had a chance to go over the State House numbers yet I would guess that the numbers are pretty much the same.
I don’t know how the new map will look, but some places don’t have a big amount of room for Republicans to go overboard with gerrymandering. North Carolina is a big concern, but even there they’ll be limited. Protecting NC-2 for Ellmers and making NC-7 and NC-8 stronger for Republicans would be their goal, but I don’t know if it’s possible without the map ending up in court.
The VRA districts more often then not become like the Homelands in apartheid South Africa leaving the surrounding area lily white and very conservative. AL and LA haven’t had a minority population increase to allow for another district. In the case of LA, LA 2 probably expands and becomes slightly less minority. Corrine Brown-D FL was very opposed to a commission in FL and is going to Fed Court saying it violates VRA since respecting county and municipal lines would make it next to impossible to give her a majority minority district… Hers currently has cobbled together most the AA vote from JAX to MCO. Doesn’t IL have weird redistricting scheme to choose it’s map…something bout drawing lots to choose plan? The Hare district was tailor made for a Dem and torturously drawn…any smoothing out of those lines only helps Schilling but the former Kirk and Bean districts could be made more Dem. I believe Cuomo to Dem dismay has said he wants a non partisan plan or he will veto it. If NY loses 2 seats I can see them taking one from each party likely Owens from the Dems and an upstater from the GOP.
that’s tracking the net changes in all state legislative chambers? I know the ones that have switched control, but I’d also like to see how we did in ones that didn’t switch.
It won’t affect redistricting, but the Republican gains in the Iowa House were huge. Probably the new chamber will have 60R, 40D. I was hoping for no worse than 55R, which Democrats could conceivably get back in a good year. Now it will take several cycles to claw our way back. Control of the Iowa Senate will be on the table in 2012, but the best we can hope for in the Iowa House is to cut into the Republican lead a little.
Joe Donnelly looks like a goner.
Mark Critz can probably be drawn out. Dem areas of his seat could be dumped into Altmire’s district. Dem areas from Kanjorski, Dent, and Carney’s districts could be dumped into Tim Holden’s district. That’d be a net loss of just one, with Critz’ seat being the one deleted by population loss.
Schuler can be drawn out fairly easily. Just have him swap some territory with Patrick McHenry.
The rest of NC gets tricky. There’s generally one strong GOP seat for each weak Dem seat. If they go for all four (Miller, Kissell, McIntyre, and shoring up Etheridge’s district), they run the risk of diluting themselves too much. If you’re willing to strengthen Brad Miller though, you could probably erase the other three, for a net loss of four in NC within a cycle or two.
Gulp.
Florida will help even this out, if the redistricting initiative holds up. We should get a seat out of Orlando and one in St Petersburg, at least.
In Wisconsin and Michigan, I’d expect to just see a consolidation of seats already won. MI-07 could be drawn further east, making it more GOP. In Wisconsin the Rs would be crazy to go for more than a 3-5 map.
Russ Carnahan should be easy to draw out.
When does Kentucky draw maps? I’d worry about Ben Chandler except for the fact that whatshisname is still governor.
We control the whole process in Washington, right? I can’t wait to draw Reichert out. Jaime Herrera we may have to beat the honest way.
We control the whole process in Arkansas too, right? Hopefully we can mix up AR-01 and AR-02 so that we can win Little Rock back from Tim Griffin.
In Illinois, I’m hoping we can mash up the districts of Kirk, Bean, Roskam, Foster, Biggert, and Halvorson to produce three lean Ds and three lean Rs. We very nearly held four of those, and now hold zero, so that should be doable. Phil Hare’s district is already gerrymandered, we may have to win it back the honest way.
This is practically a diary already, I’d better stop. What do people with more knowledge have to say about this subject?
The republicans gain two, the democrats gain two, and for the three remaining competitive districts the democrats lead in two and the republicans in one. That mean the likely result can be 31-31.
We will see. No-one republican can be ready for join the blue team? The republicans check every time they need.
I have a doubt about 2001. They are elections in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi, if I remember well, but I know not exactly if the state chambers get in play. I know not if this would have effect in the redistricting process for these states.
After lose a lot of seats in R+ territory the effect of the republican redistricting in some states can be so low. Many states have previous republican gerrymandered maps and they can do few more. Only Texas and North Carolina (if the governor has not power for stop it) give room for changes what can affect to 4-5 democratic incumbents.
I get a lot more disappointed by the big chance what we are losing for reverse a republican gerrymandered map. The democrats have a lot of work here, but some people think in non-partisan process while the republicans do all that they can.
That means Republicans hold the highest amount of state legislative seats since before the Great Depression. This truly was a realignment.
I have no idea why they seem to love leaving seats uncontested in Arkansas (see 2008 congressional elections for instance), is there some quid pro quo going on? Well, Republicans won’t make the same mistake again in 2012.
I understand the campaign limit law is under revision, but as of the last election Montana had the lowest campaign contribution limit in the nation, for state legislative campaigns: $160. This meant that a person of moderate means could indulge in a pleasure otherwise reserved for the Eric Cantors of the world: maxing out the contribution limit for a progressive candidate. I found several in the 2006 cycle; will hunt again.