📊 Deep Dive

Given the top of ticket performance, Democratic candidates in many battleground state legislatures performed better than expected this year. As our prior research has demonstrated, typically the winning presidential candidate ushers in lots of state legislators from his party. Given Donald Trump’s state-level wins, we would have expected to see significant Republican gains in state legislative battlegrounds. But, as our preliminary analysis will show, this did not happen uniformly.

While we won’t be able to fully analyze the results of the election until all states have finalized their counts, and until the voter file is processed, we offer here a few key trends and findings based on the information we have now. We will update this analysis with additional data as it is available.

Partisan control of state chambers: A few positive developments, a few setbacks

Democrats preserved their majorities in several state chambers, including their extremely narrow one-seat majorities in the PA House and MN Senate.
Democrats flipped seats that allowed them to break Republican supermajorities in the NC House and the WI Senate.
Unfortunately, Republicans gained the majority in the MI House and the MN House.

Downballot roll-off: Higher than expected among Republicans

In prior research, we identified a long-term trend of downballot roll-off, which happens when people vote for a candidate at the top of the ticket, but then decline to vote in races that are farther down the ballot, including state legislative races. We also found that downballot Democrats experienced roll-off at higher rates than Republicans.

It looks like the trend shifted this year: We see the largest Republican roll-off rates of any of the last 3 presidential elections in MI, NC, PA, and the GA Senate.
Furthermore, Democrats in both the NC House and in the Senate received more votes than Kamala Harris did statewide.

Votes to majority: Tiny margins determine party control

In some chambers, the outcome of a single race had the potential to change partisan control, and these pivotal races had extremely narrow margins.

PA House - 483 votes in one district held Dem majority (0.008% of all chamber votes cast)
NC House - 182 votes in one district broke GOP supermajority (0.003% of all chamber votes cast)
WI Senate - 1,788 votes in one district broke GOP supermajority (0.1% of all chamber votes cast)
MI House - 1,342 votes in one district lost Dem majority (0.02% of all chamber votes cast)
MN House - 996 votes across three districts lost Dem majority (0.03% of all chamber votes cast)

Trump wins, but state legislative Democrats hold or gain

The surge and decline phenomenon suggests that downballot Democrats should not gain seats in an election where the Republican party carried the presidency—in fact, it would not have been surprising if they had lost seats across the board. However, in several battleground chambers where Donald Trump won the vote statewide, Democratic state legislative candidates either held all of their seats or made gains.

Democrats maintained their majority in the PA House.
Democrats had a net loss of zero seats in the PA Senate, GA Senate, and NC Senate.
In WI, where Trump won roughly 30,000 more votes than Harris, Democrats gained 10 seats in the Assembly and gained 5 seats in the state Senate, breaking Republicans’ supermajority and making significant inroads in the chamber.

Do you have any questions about this deep dive? Have an interesting study or report you’d like us to highlight? Hit reply and let us know!

This preliminary assessment of some of what happened at the state legislative level in the 2024 elections isn’t comprehensive, and it doesn’t explain why. Beware reductive analyses that point to just one factor leading to election outcomes, or that claim easy explanations for complex phenomena like voting behavior. We will need to wait for all votes to be counted, the voter file to be released, and to collectively engage in debriefs within and between our communities in listening and learning sessions before offering broader analyses of this year’s results.

But here’s what we do know. First, as usual, the wins and losses for state legislative seats and entire chambers were tiny. Just 182 votes in one district gave Democrats the one seat needed to break the Republican supermajority in the North Carolina House. Second, these wins – that bucked historical conventions and ushered in reflective, historic leaders into our state houses – would not have been possible without the hard work of organizers and volunteers, including our vibrant Sister District community.

In solidarity,
Gaby

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