In 2020 Republicans Won Huge Majorities of State Races and that should continue on November 8th. Voters need to understand that State Legislators are the Federal Candidates of the Future and that is why No American can vote for ANY DEMOCRAT AT ANY LEVEL in this Election!
(See Mark Levin Video - "A vote for ANY Democrat is a Vote for the Destruction of America")
by John Haughey, The Epoch Times, October 28, 2022
There are 435 U.S. House and 34 U.S. Senate seats on midterm referendums nationwide, with voters also set to elect 36 governors. But these contests will only be seen by people in most states when they go to the polls on Nov. 8.
Also on tap will be 133 ballot measures in 37 states and elections for 6,279 of 7,383 state legislature seats across 46 states.
Amid the sustained shrinkage of local and state media outlets and mushrooming growth of 24/7 cable news networks and digital news sites that nearly exclusively focus on national issues and midterm races, state legislatures garner increasingly less coverage beyond undermanned capitol news bureaus that are often mere shells of their former staffing.
But make no mistake: State lawmakers adopt policies, impose regulations, and issue decisions that have more relevancy and impact in voters’ day-to-day lives than those that come from Congress.
Impact on Daily Life
Outside of national defense, foreign policy, immigration, and interstate commerce, state legislatures are responsible for nearly everything else that the government deals with.
State lawmakers are the primary decision-makers across an array of concerns, including education, health care, infrastructure, elections, land use, sales taxes, firearms, and utilities, while controlling more than $2 trillion in yearly balanced-budget spending. After June’s U.S. Supreme Court repeal of Roe vs. Wade, that realm of responsibilities now includes regulating abortion access.
As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in 1932, state legislatures are the “laboratories of democracy.” On legislatures’ dockets in 2023 will be the annual top three issues—state budgets, education, and health care—as well as legislation related to marijuana, autonomous vehicles, energy, prescription drugs, data privacy, policing, sports gaming, liquor laws, tax policies, family paid leave, technology, and school choice.
State legislatures can greatly vary in size and scope—unicameral Nebraska only has a 49-member nonpartisan Senate, while New Hampshire has 400 representatives in its House alone.
Lawmakers in four states—Texas, Montana, North Dakota, and Nevada—don’t convene in even-numbered years, while those in eight states—California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio—meet year-round with recesses. Most state legislatures are in session for 30-to-90 days per year.
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Yet state lawmakers are far more prolific than their congressional counterparts during their breakneck annual legislative sessions. An analysis by Quorum States, a Washington legislation-tracking service, has documented that state legislatures introduce 23 times more pieces of legislation than Congress does annually. The average state lawmaker either sponsors or signs onto 33 measures, with about four being adopted each session.
According to Virginia-based MultiState, a state and local government relations and analytics firm, state lawmakers, on average, collectively introduce nearly 250,000 pieces of legislation per year, adopting about 30,000 annually.
Republicans Dominate
Going into the Nov. 8 elections, of 98 state legislature chambers—Nebraska being the 99th unicameral, nonpartisan body, but certainly Republican in all but name—61 have Republican majorities and 37 are controlled by Democrats.
Collectively, there are 3,978 Republican state lawmakers constituting 52 percent of the state legislature seats nationwide. Democrats control 47 percent percent of the seats.
Republicans control both chambers in 30 states, and Democrats own both senate and house majorities in 17 states. There are 23 states with Republican trifectas, meaning that the governor is also from the same party. Democrats have 15 trifectas.
Only three state legislatures are split, with different parties controlling either of the two chambers, and only 12 states don’t have unified party control of the senate, house, and governor’s mansion, the second-lowest ratio in 70 years, “a sign that ticket-splitting may be waning nationwide” among voters, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
The senates in Alaska and Minnesota are held by the Republican Party, while the states’ lower chambers are controlled by Democrats. It’s just the opposite in Virginia, which along with Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey, won’t have state legislature elections on their Nov. 8 ballots.
Republicans have been ascending in state legislatures for the past 20 years. Democrats haven’t held a majority of seats nationwide since 2010, when the Republican Party captured majorities in 24 chambers. Democrats have rebounded slightly since 2016, when Republicans won majorities in a peak 66 chambers.
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The Nov. 8 general election will be the first round of state legislative races in the wake of post-2020 Census redistricting.
“Watch for more races between incumbents and contested races where the political geography has changed significantly—particularly in suburban areas,” the NCSL stated in its 2022 election preview. “More turnover is a possibility.”
Also, while there are “several hundred new freshman legislators” elected nationwide in every election, these numbers tend to be higher in the first election after decennial redistricting, the NCSL noted.
“This year, we expect the number to be closer to 1,000, or just under 15 percent of the nationwide total,” the organization stated.
The NCSL rates state legislature races in 21 states to be competitive enough that control of chambers could change hands. Over the past century, an average of 12 chambers change party control in each general election cycle, but the organization noted that “that number has declined in recent years.”
That stay-put trend will likely unfold in the midterms. “While individual races may yield some upsets, chamber control is unlikely to change” in many—if any—chambers, according to the NCSL.
“Chambers held by Democrats appear to be more competitive than those held by Republicans,” the organization stated. “That means Republicans have more opportunities to make gains.”
