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How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

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Composition Of The Us House Of Representatives By Political Party Affiliation For The 116th Congress In 2019 By State

Democrats May Have Control At The Federal Level But Republicans Are Pushing Back Through States

30 state legislatures are now controlled by Republicans, while only 18 are controlled by Democrats.

Though the hotly anticipated “Blue Wave” did not sweep over the country as thoroughly as some analysts had predicted in the weeks and months leading up to the American election on November 3, 2020, there’s no denying that Democrats notched major victories in both the Senate and the White House, despite losing several seats in the House of Representatives.

But that victory is beginning to be undercut by the majority of state legislatures, which are Republican-controlled, as they begin to enact stricter voting laws, pass state sovereignty bills and push through highly conservative legislation to push back against Democratic ideologies in Washington.

Opinionhow Can Democrats Fight The Gop Power Grab On Congressional Seats You Won’t Like It

Facing mounting pressure from within the party, Senate Democrats finally hinted Tuesday that an emboldened Schumer may bring the For the People Act back for a second attempt at passage. But with no hope of GOP support for any voting or redistricting reforms and Republicans Senate numbers strong enough to require any vote to cross the 60-vote filibuster threshold, Schumer’s effort will almost certainly fail.

Senate Democrats are running out of time to protect America’s blue cities, and the cost of inaction could be a permanent Democratic minority in the House. Without resorting to nuclear filibuster reform tactics, Biden, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be presiding over a devastating loss of Democrats’ most reliable electoral fortresses.

Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on Twitter @themaxburns.


States With Republican Governors Had Highest Covid Incidence And Death Rates Study Finds

Dareh Gregorian

States with Democratic governors had the highest incidence and death rates from Covid-19 in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, but states with Republican governors surpassed those rates as the crisis dragged on, a study released Tuesday found.

“From March to early June, Republican-led states had lower Covid-19 incidence rates compared with Democratic-led states. On June 3, the association reversed, and Republican-led states had higher incidence,” the study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina showed.

“For death rates, Republican-led states had lower rates early in the pandemic, but higher rates from July 4 through mid-December,” the study found.

Republicans Introduce 253 Bills To Restrict Voting Rights In States Across The Us

Map Shows Depth of GOP Dominance in the States

Republican lawmakers in 43 states have introduced a total of 253 bills aimed at restricting access to the ballot box for tens of millions of people. Republican-controlled states, including Southern states that employed “lynch law” terror to block African Americans from voting during the decades-long period of Jim Crow segregation, are flooding their legislatures with measures to effectively disenfranchise working class, poor and minority voters.


The laws largely focus on tightening voter ID requirements, purging voter rolls and restricting absentee and mail-in ballots.

In the United States, state governments have the authority to oversee elections and determine election procedures and rules, including for national elections. Within each state, individual counties have a great deal of latitude in the conduct of elections.

Republicans control both the lower and upper legislative houses in 36 of the 50 states, and both the legislatures and governorships in 23 states, making it very possible for far-reaching barriers to the ballot box to be imposed across much of the country.

Despite opening the door for a return to restrictive and discriminatory voting practices, the 2013 ruling met with little resistance on the part of the Democratic Party. Neither the Obama White House nor the congressional Democrats mounted any serious effort to reverse the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act by enacting new legislation in the years since the reactionary Shelby ruling.

Texas

A Different America: How Republicans Hold Near Total Control In 23 Us States

In those states, Republicans hold the governorship and the legislature, giving them the power to take aim at abortion access, trans rights, voting and gun safety


Last modified on Tue 15 Jun 2021 14.38 BST

Democrats across the US cheered last month, as Texas legislators staged a walkout from the statehouse to block the passage of a Republican bill that would enact a number of restrictions on voting access.

Read more

But the victory seemed short-lived, as the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, quickly announced he planned to call a special session to get the legislation passed.

The walkout and the probably only temporary relief it provides for Democrats demonstrated the immense legislative power that Republicans have in dozens of states across the country and the ability that gives them to pass a hard-right agenda on a vast range of issues from abortion to the ability to vote.


In 23 US states, Republicans hold the governorship and the legislature, giving the party near total control to advance its policies. This year, Republicans have used that power to aggressively push their conservative social agenda – taking aim at abortion access, transgender rights and gun safety, as well as voting laws.

During the Texas legislative session, which concluded late last month, Republicans approved bills to allow permitless carry of firearms, ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and increase criminal penalties for protesters who block intersections.

These 3 Maps Show Just How Dominant Republicans Are In America After Tuesday

When it comes to control of state government, Republicans dominated at record levels during the Obama years. On Tuesday, they somehow managed to become even more dominant.

In part because Americans like a check and balance on their president, in part because Republicans played their cards right, Republicans grabbed more of America’s statehouses and governor’s mansions during the Obama administration than at any time in the modern era. And they held onto those majorities Tuesday.

Results are still trickling in, but it looks like Republicans will still control an all-time high 69 of 99 state legislative chambers. They’ll hold at least 33 governorships, tying a 94-year-old record.


That means that come 2017, they’ll have total control of government in at least 25 states, and partial control in 20 states. According to population calculations by the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, that translates to roughly 80 percent of the population living in a state either all or partially controlled by Republicans.

Things are just as good for the GOP at the federal level, where Republicans have reached the trifecta. They just won the White House, they’ve kept their majorities in Congress and they have a chance to reshape the Supreme Court to a  strong conservative ideological leaning.

Democrats, meanwhile, will go into 2017 without any significant gains in Congress and with total control of just five states.

Eric Holder: There Is Still A Fight For Democrats Against Gop Gerrymandering

In McConnell’s Kentucky, for instance, Republicans are divided over how far to go during the upcoming redistricting process, which they control in the deep-red state. The more extreme wing wants to crack the Democratic stronghold of Louisville, currently represented by Rep. John Yarmuth. More cautious Republicans like McConnell are willing to settle for smaller changes that reduce Democratic margins while stuffing more Republican voters into hotly contested swing districts.

Make no mistake: McConnell’s caution isn’t rooted in any newfound respect for the integrity of our electoral process. Instead, Republicans are mainly worried about avoiding the costly and embarrassing court decisions that invalidated their most extreme overreaches and potentially turn the line-drawing over to the courts. So McConnell’s approach doesn’t reject partisan gerrymandering — it just avoids the type of high-profile city-cracking that could land the Kentucky GOP in federal court.


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For instance, in 2020, Yarmuth won his Louisville district with a comfortable 62.7 percent of the vote. By turning Yarmuth’s single district into portions of two or three new districts, Republicans could turn his safe blue seat into swing districts and safe Republican strongholds. But the naked politicking of that kind of move would invite dozens of court challenges from outraged Democrats and election integrity organizations, tying up GOP time and treasure in the middle of campaign season.

Yet relying on the Republican-aligned Supreme Court to find a remedy is a gamble that could just as easily backfire on Democrats. In the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause, the conservative majority ruled 5-4 that Congress, not the federal courts, must address partisan gerrymandering. As a result, half a dozen Democrat-filed federal cases were tossed out and the gerrymandered district maps allowed to stand. More outcomes like that would be catastrophic both for Democrats and democracy.

For now, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee is fighting back against Republican efforts in a flurry of high-profile lawsuits. The organization, chaired by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., has said it is committed to countering the Republican plan to split up blue cities.

The Battleground States Advancing Controversial Election And Voting Bills

May 7, 2021 / 9:51 AM / CBS News

Arizona GOP launches recount of ballots04:43


Washington — Several battleground states controlled by Republicans have pushed for big changes in voting and election laws in recent months, in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s electoral loss and a rise in mail-in voting due to the coronavirus pandemic.

These states are considering changes to election laws, such as measures to enforce additional ID requirements, restrict access to dropboxes and shrink the pool of voters.

Arizona, Florida, and Texas each have growing and increasingly diverse populations and play a substantial role in the outcome of presidential contests. All three have Republican legislatures and governorships. Michigan has a Democratic governor, but its Republican-controlled legislature is considering several bills that could make absentee voting more difficult.

Arizona and Michigan narrowly supported President Biden in the 2020 election, and Mr. Trump won Florida and Texas. Georgia, which Mr. Biden also won, has already passed a controversial voting law including some new restrictions.

Here is a rundown of some of the key states states proposing changes to voting and election laws:


Ballotpedia: Majority Of State Legislatures Are Republican Controlled

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The results of the last election solidified a trend that state legislatures were becoming more Republican.

In the 2020 general election, 5,875 state legislative seats in 86 legislative chambers were up for regularly scheduled elections. Roughly five percent of them, 315, flipped from one party to another.

The majority of the 315 – 68 percent, or 215 in total – flipped from Democrat to Republican. Whereas 78 Republican seats, 24.8 percent, flipped to Democrat, according to an analysis published by Ballotpedia.

On Nov. 3, the net change was Republicans gained 141 seats, Democrats lost 133 seats, and independent and third party candidates lost eight seats.

At least one seat flipped parties in every state holding regularly scheduled state legislative elections except for Hawaii, Ballotpedia reports.


The percentage of state legislative seat flips in 2020 represents a 38 percent decrease from 2018, when 508 seats flipped party affiliations.

New Hampshire saw the most flipped seats of 50, resulting in both chambers of its General Court changing from Democratic to Republican control.

As of November 2020, three-fourths of states have governors and legislatures of the same party, “a sign that ticket-splitting may be waning nationwide,” the National Conference of State Legislatures reports.

Map: Republicans To Have Full Control Of 23 States Democrats 15

In 2021, Republicans will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 23 states. Democrats will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 15 states.

Population of the 24 fully R-controlled states: 134,035,267Population of the 15 fully D-controlled states: 120,326,393

Republicans have full control of the legislative branch in 30 states. Democrats have full control of the legislative branch in 18 states.

Population of the 30 fully R-controlled legislature states: 185,164,412Population of the 18 fully D-controlled legislature states: 133,888,565

This week, Andrew Cuomo’s star went down in flames. While the smoke clears, let’s take a moment to sit back and reminisce about the governor’s long history with ethical and legal violations.

Cuomo’s controversies regarding sexual harassment and nursing homes deaths were far from his first abuses of power. In fact, his administration has a long history of it, ranging from interfering with ethics commissions, to financial corruption.

In July 2013, Cuomo formed the Moreland Commission to investigate corruption in New York’s government. At first it was a success, giving Cuomo good PR. Yet as it went on there were rumors that, contrary to his claim that “Anything they want to look at they can look at,” Cuomo was interfering with the Commission’s investigations. There was friction within the Commission, itself with two factions forming: “’Team Independence’ and ‘Team We-Have-a-Boss’.”

Gubernatorial And Legislative Party Control Of State Government

One key reason why Republicans dominate in state ...
  • Top 10 Closest Primaries: January to June 2020
  • Wave elections

Gubernatorial and legislative party control of state government refers to the role of political parties in the power dynamic between state legislatures and executives. Below, we examine the partisan affiliation of the 1,972 state senators, 5,411 state representatives, and 50 state governors across the United States.

Partisan breakdown of state governments

Below, Ballotpedia presents our information on the partisan breakdown of state senators, state representatives, and governors as well as the state legislature and state executive branch as a whole. We also examine state government trifectas, which occur when the state house, the state senate, and the office of the governor are each controlled by one political party. Trifectas are important to highlight since unified partisan affiliation between the branches of state government can impact a state’s legislative process.

The following maps display current state government trifectas as well as historical trifectas leading up to the 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections. Use the buttons below to select a map.

Republicans Now Enjoy Unmatched Power In The States It Was A 40

David Byler

Over the past 40 years, Republicans have quietly gained overwhelming power in state legislatures. It did not happen overnight, and it won’t reverse itself soon. The implications could linger for years.

Who controls state legislatures

Who controls state legislatures

Who controls state legislatures

2020

Even after the 1980 election — when Ronald Reagan was first elected president — Democrats still controlled most statehouses: 29 to the Republicans’ 15. The two parties shared power in the few that remained, all in the Midwest and Northeast.

After the 2020 election, the numbers nearly reversed. Republicans control 30 state legislatures, while Democrats hold only 18.

How did the GOP make such big gains? And what do those gains mean?

Politics Podcast: Should Washington Dc Be The 51st State

Statehood for Puerto Rico actually has moresupport among the public than statehood for the District of Columbia, but congressional Democrats haven’t demonstrated the same level of commitment to making the island a state. Although the House has introduced statehood legislation for Puerto Rico, the bill has fewer than 20 cosponsors — less than one-tenth of the support the D.C. bill is getting. But in contrast to the D.C. legislation, the Puerto Rican statehood bill actually got some House Republicans to sign on. And while Puerto Rico doesn’t have any companion legislation in the Senate, Florida Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott haveexpressed support for the island’s statehood.

People advocating for Puerto Rican statehood may be able to drum up Republican support because some conservatives think that residents’ desire for autonomy within the U.S. federalist governing structure might actually make Puerto Rico less receptive to Democratic candidates. But Puerto Ricans have more mixed views about statehood than Washingtonians do. Although 97 percent of voters backed statehood in a 2017 referendum, only 23 percent of registered voters turned out, and a 2018 poll found that 48 percent of Puerto Ricans supported statehood compared to 26 percent who wanted to it remain a territory and 10 percent who wanted it to become an independent nation. Nonetheless, Gov. Ricardo Rossello is pushing hard for statehood.

Republicans In States Hold Overwhelming Control In Post

Fuzzy Slippers

As the Democratic Party engages in a highly amusing circular firing squad over their shock loss of so many House seats, the impact of Republican gains at the state level doesn’t seem to have fully dawned on them.  Or if it has, they are doing what they do best, kicking that particular can down the road, a decade down the road.

Over at FiveThirtyEight, where they appear of late to be better at Monday morning quarterbacking than at analyzing polls and predicting election outcomes, they have on the enormous gains Republicans made at the state level and how that will impact redistricting.

Republicans won almost every election where redistricting was at stake. https://t.co/D1gJnTfzaO

Republicans are set to control the redistricting of 188 congressional seats — or 43% of the entire U.S. House.

Democrats will control the redistricting of, at most, 73 seats, or 17%. https://t.co/D1gJnTxa2m

— FiveThirtyEight November 18, 2020

These numbers are quite different than those predicted byFiveThirtyEight on October 27th:  “Our analysis found that 117 congressional districts are likely to be drawn by Republicans, while 47 are likely to be drawn by Democrats.”

Here are the key 2020 races noted by FiveThirtyEight post-election:

Democrats are apparently preparing to fight and are interested in “fair maps” and “an actual battle of ideas.”

NBC News reports :

How Long Has The Senate Been Controlled By Republicans

4.6/5RepublicansRepublicanscontrolledSenate

Senators elected to regular terms in 2008 were in the last two years of those terms during this Congress. The Senate had a Democratic majority, while the House had a Republican majority. As of 2019, this is the last Congress in which Democrats controlled the Senate.

Secondly, which party controlled the Senate before elections? Republicans, having won a majority of seats in the Senate in 2014, held the Senate majority with 54 seats before this election. Although Democrats made a net gain of two seats and did not lose any of their seats, Republicans retained control of the Senate for the 115th United States Congress.

Then, which party controls the Senate 2019?

116th United States Congress
1st: January 3, 2019 – January 3, 2020 2nd: January 3, 2020 – present

Which party has had control of Congress the most?

However, after the Democratic Party again won back control in the elections of 1954, it was the majority party in both houses of Congress for most of the next forty years.

Florida Vs California: How Two States Tackled Covid

The researchers theorized that one reason for the change is that Democrats were in charge of states where people who had the virus first arrived in the country — but Republicans were less stringent about safeguards, which could have contributed to their states’ ultimately higher incidence and death rates.

“The early trends could be explained by high Covid-19 cases and deaths among Democratic-led states that are home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020,” the researchers wrote. “However, the subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus.”

The study, which which was published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined Covid-19 “incidence, death, testing, and test positivity rates from March 15 through December 15, 2020,” when there were 16 million confirmed cases in the U.S. and 300,000 deaths. It focused on per-capita infection and death rates in the 26 GOP-led states and 24 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., and made statistical adjustments for issues such as population density.

But “policy differences” between the Republican and Democratic leaders emerged as a big factor for the reversal of the states’ fortunes, the study suggests.

“One of the most concerning things last year is the politicization of public health restrictions,” Lee said. “They’re not opinions, they’re based on evidence.”

How Much Damage Have Republicans Done In The States

Turns out making cuts to public services to fit an ideology of small government and traditionalism is just not very popular.

Mr. Grossmann is the author of “Red State Blues: How the Conservative Revolution Stalled in the States.”

The 2018 election marked at least a temporary end to Republicans’ rise to power in many states. Before their losses in that election, Republicans had full control of 26 states, giving them a sustained opportunity to transform American subnational government.

Liberals certainly feared the worst from this Republican grip on the states. Dark portraits of the Koch brothers’ network and the American Legislative Exchange Council suggested that Republicans were in a position to fundamentally reorient states to scale back public services, serve corporations and the rich, and impose a conservative social agenda. Democrats, from this perspective, would need years, if not decades, to reverse the trend.

The Republican Party still controls many more state governments and legislative chambers than Democrats nationwide. But the fact is, the Republican results at the state level have not been very impressive. Republican-controlled state governments largely failed to enact policies that advance conservative goals. They have been effective at staying in power but have not altered the reach of government or its socio-economic impact.

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Map: Republican Vs Democrat Control In The States

Republicans have full control of the legislature and governorship in 24 states.

Democrats have full control of the legislature and governorship in 7 states.

This week, Andrew Cuomo’s star went down in flames. While the smoke clears, let’s take a moment to sit back and reminisce about the governor’s long history with ethical and legal violations.

Cuomo’s controversies regarding sexual harassment and nursing homes deaths were far from his first abuses of power. In fact, his administration has a long history of it, ranging from interfering with ethics commissions, to financial corruption.

In July 2013, Cuomo formed the Moreland Commission to investigate corruption in New York’s government. At first it was a success, giving Cuomo good PR. Yet as it went on there were rumors that, contrary to his claim that “Anything they want to look at they can look at,” Cuomo was interfering with the Commission’s investigations. There was friction within the Commission, itself with two factions forming: “’Team Independence’ and ‘Team We-Have-a-Boss’.”

The Commission eventually implicated two Republicans who were allies of Cuomo. Soon after, Cuomo approved some ethics reforms and shut the Commission down. Cuomo responded to rumors of interference by saying “It’s my commission…I can appoint it, I can disband it. I appoint you, I can un-appoint you tomorrow…I can’t ‘interfere’ with it, because it is mine.”

The IRS did not meet these standards.

Key Findings:

Watch Georgia North Carolina Florida And Arizona

Republicans now dominate state government, with 32 ...

Nathan L. Gonzales

ANALYSIS — More than 16 months before Election Day, new House district lines haven’t even been drawn, and yet the fight for Congress is likely to hinge on the outcomes in four critical states.

On a basic level, every state matters in the Senate, considering Republicans need to gain just a single seat to get to the majority. Each significant recruitment development would instantly affect the handicapping of a race and the fight for control. But there are other states less dependent on a single candidate.

Every seat also matters in the House, where Republicans need a net gain of five seats for a majority — a paltry number in a body of 435 members and in the face of the midterm history, which favors the party out of the White House. And some states, such as Texas, are of particular importance to one of the chambers. But a handful of states are hosting competitive races that will affect control of both the House and the Senate.

Why Do Republicans Want To Change Election Laws

Many of the states that Biden won in 2020 were states that Trump had won in 2016, including Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. These three states, where Republicans still hold the majority in the state legislatures, look likely to pass new voting laws after their recent election results were contested by Republicans both from within and without.

The reasons for these changes vary depending on whom you ask. As Politico reported last month, some Republicans are using the unsupported claims of election fraud to argue that election security needs to be tighter to prevent future fraud. Republicans have often argued that voter fraud is common and needs to be fought with stricter voting rules.

Alternatively, one Georgia Republican, Alice O’Lenick, recently stated the laws had to be changed “so that we at least have a shot at winning.” In her comments, O’Lenick, who serves on her county’s board of elections, echoed a sentiment Trump expressed in March 2020 when he told Fox News that increased voting levels would ensure, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Voter Registration And State Political Control

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The state Democratic or Republican Party controls the governorship, the state legislative houses, and U.S. Senate representation. Nebraska’s legislature is unicameral, i.e., it has only one legislative house and is officially non-partisan, though party affiliation still has an unofficial influence on the legislative process.

The simplest measure of party strength in a state voting population is the affiliation totals from voter registration for the 30 states and the District of Columbia as of 2019 that allow registered voters to indicate a party preference when registering to vote. 20 states do not include party preference with voter registration: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. The party affiliations in the party control table are obtained from state party registration figures where indicated. Only Wyoming has a majority of registered voters identifying themselves as Republicans; two states have a majority of registered voters identifying themselves as Democrats: Maryland and Kentucky .

Opinionthe Fantasy Of A New Republican Party

Republicans now control the redistricting process in 20 states, or 187 congressional districts, compared to only 11 states or 84 congressional districts for Democrats. What’s worse, Republicans only need to nudge the congressional boundaries in a handful of those states to wipe out Democrats’ hopes of retaining the House of Representatives in 2022.

In a worst-case scenario that sees the GOP split up congressional districts in major cities, Democrats could stand to lose over a dozen House seats previously considered safe. And even under a more conservative approach advocated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and others, the GOP is still considering gutting almost half a dozen now-safe Democratic districts in states such as Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee.

Partisan Composition Of State Legislatures

Partisan composition of state legislatures
Legislatures
AlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyoming
See also

The partisan composition of state legislatures refers to which political party holds the majority of seats in the State Senate and State House. Altogether, there are 1,972 state senators and 5,411 state representatives.The breakdown of chamber control after the November 2020 election is as follows:

  • 37 chambers
  • One chamber with power sharing between the parties

The breakdown of chamber control prior to the November 2020 election was as follows:

  • 39 chambers
See also: Partisan composition of state houses and Partisan composition of state senates

state government trifecta

As of August 15, 2021, there are 23 Republican trifectas, 15 Democratic trifectas, and 12 divided governments where neither party holds trifecta control.

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