2022 vs. 2024 State Legislative Report Card
In the first issue of the State Navigate newsletter, we've created a summary of the change in state legislatures since the November 2022 elections.
Introduction to State Navigate, your compass for state legislatures!
Hello, and welcome to the State Navigate Newsletter! This is Chaz Nuttycombe, President of State Navigate, a new nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization currently in the works, with a slated launch of July 2025. I’ve imported everyone who has engaged with our content at CNalysis.com over the years that I can as we move to the next chapter in covering, analyzing, and promoting state legislatures.
For those who haven’t read up on our 501(c)(3), think of State Navigate as a go-to for everything related to state legislatures across the country. State legislative election forecasting, accessible election data, public state legislative polling, aggregated and original state legislative news, bill tracking, legislative vote results, legislator ideology, and campaign finance database, for every state in the country, free of charge.
It’s something that’s been desired by many: politicians, citizens, the campaign world, lobbyists, organizations and interest groups, election analysts, journalists, you name it. Over the past year and a half, I started laying the groundwork for such an organization to exist. With CNalysis coming to a close and its content being moved to State Navigate upon launch, our team (including myself, our board of directors, officers, and committee members) is now in full swing on making this happen.
My main job as President over the next several months will be coordinating with our team and making sure we’re all on task and track, as well as, of course, fundraising for the project (money doesn’t grow on trees, of course!). I’m beyond excited to work with such talented people and work at the pleasure of the board, the audience cultivated at CNalysis, and the greater public so that we can build something truly great.
Later this week, we’ll be unveiling one of our first big projects: calculating the 2024 statewide election results by state legislative district. This data will be available in Google Sheets format and will be viewable on the website upon launch. This data has become increasingly hard to come by as organizations that have routinely done this have either paywalled their content or are no longer doing this work, and is the first step to accomplishing our goals.
This newsletter will have at least one issue a month. At the end of each month, I’ll list the accomplished development tasks so you can keep up to date with the latest on our progress. Other issues over the next few months will be promoting events and support for our 501(c)(3) or on occasion pre-launch content that will be accessible.
Today, we’ll be detailing the overall change in state legislatures since the November 2022 elections. With vacancies and special elections occurring since November 2022, we felt that this would be a good comparison to accurately track change since the last time there was a national election year.
If you’d like to support our 501(c)(3) with a tax-deductible donation, we’d greatly appreciate it if you made a contribution using the button below! Cheers, and enjoy!
What’s been at stake
All but two states have had state legislative elections since November 2022: Alabama and Maryland, which has every state legislative seat up in midterm elections. Two more chambers haven’t had an election since, including the Michigan Senate and Minnesota Senate, also up in midterm elections. Every other chamber in the country has had an election in 2023 or 2024.
That doesn’t necessarily mean every seat in these chambers has been up, as most State Senates don’t have “staggered terms,” meaning that they only elect roughly half of their members at a time. The exceptions to this are every state in New England plus New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kansas, South Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona, and Idaho.
Still, most state legislative elections have been up since the November 2022 election: 6,401 state legislative seats have had an election since then out of the 7,386 existing seats, or 86.67% of state legislative seats. Majorities and supermajorities have been lost and created since then, but the overall national compositional change has been meager.
The change in power, by chamber
There have been 20 chambers where the status of power has changed in state legislatures, though most of that change has been supermajorities either lost or created. As state legislative elections become increasingly tied to the presidential vote, the result of who controls the majority in state legislatures has become increasingly predictable, save for a few swing states.
Here are where supermajorities have been created:
2023: Republicans create a supermajority in the Louisiana House
2024: Republicans create a supermajority in the Nebraska Legislature
2024: Democrats create a supermajority in the Connecticut House
2024: Republicans create a supermajority in the Iowa House
2024: Democrats created supermajorities in the Oregon House and Senate
2024: Republicans create a supermajority in the South Carolina Senate
Here are where supermajorities have been broken:
2024: Republicans broke the Democratic supermajority in the Colorado House
2024: Democrats broke the Republican supermajorities in the Montana House and Senate
2024: Republicans broke the Democratic supermajority in the Nevada Assembly
2024: Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the North Carolina House
2024: Republicans broke the Democratic supermajorities in the Vermont House and Senate
2024: Republicans broke the Democratic supermajority in the New York Senate
2024: Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the Wisconsin Senate
Finally, here’s where majorities have changed:
2023: Democrats flipped the Virginia House
2024: Republicans flipped the Michigan House
2024: Republicans broke the Democratic majority in the Minnesota House
2023: Democrats flipped the Alaska House
The change in power, by seats
Since November 2022, Republicans have netted 53 seats in state legislatures nationwide: this represents 0.72% of all state legislative seats and 0.83% of the state legislative seats that have had an election since November 2022. Note that this count includes the change in coalitions in Alaska.
Some states have had major changes in their composition since 2022, but most states had little to no change in composition. I’ve assembled a master sheet for the change in power in state legislatures since 2022, as well as a list of the seats that flipped on the state legislative level in 2024.
The biggest changes in state legislative composition this year, where the change in legislative composition by party caucus is over 5%, are in Wisconsin, Montana, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Mostly thanks to redistricting, Democrats saw a large compositional shift in their direction in Montana in Wisconsin. Hawaii and New Hampshire experienced red waves while Vermont experienced a red tsunami, providing the largest shift in legislative composition in the country since 2022, with Republicans gaining an astounding 23 seats, or 12.78% of Vermont’s state legislative seats.
Conclusion
The results of state legislative elections since the midterms have produced meager change. While there have been 20 chambers where the status of power has changed, only 4 have resulted in majorities changing. Despite almost every seat having an election since then, there’s been less than a 1% change in the overall composition of state legislatures.
Looking ahead to 2025 and 2026, the question remains whether Democrats will be able to negate the gains Republicans have made in state legislatures since 2020 should they continue to have a turnout advantage in non-presidential elections and if thermostatic opinion shifts against Republicans once again, and if so, by how much.
Upon launch next Summer, we’ll be launching our forecasts for the 2025 Virginia and New Jersey state legislative and gubernatorial elections, but the work has already begun on building them. Our team looks forward to keeping you and the greater public informed on state legislatures.
If you’d like to support our 501(c)(3) with a tax-deductible donation, we’d greatly appreciate it if you made a contribution using the button below! Cheers, and enjoy!
"Mostly thanks to redistricting, Democrats saw a large compositional shift in their direction in Montana in Vermont" think you meant "Montana and Wisconsin", not Vermont.