by Karl Kurtz
[See further update, Nov. 28.]
They're still counting votes in one disputed race in the Pennsylvania House that could reverse the majority from 102R-101D. But yesterday the Republican caucus organized and chose a speaker and majority leader, and the Democrats chose the minority leader. Both parties reelected their incumbent leaders.
So we'll take that step in Pennsylvania as a sign that it's safe to update our counts of partisan control of state legislatures and number of seats held by each party. Here are the current stats:
Total switches in party control: 11 (10 to the D's and 1 to tied). This also reinstates as "true" (it was false for a while) our previous posting, All Party Switches in One Direction.
Legislative control: 24D, 16R, 9 split, 1 nonpartisan.
Chambers controlled: 56D, 41R, 1 nonpartisan.
Total control, legislature and governor: 16D, 10R, 23 divided, 1 nonpartisan.
Net gains of legislative seats: +321D (+148D East, +107D Midwest, +21D South, +73D West).
For detailed numbers on any single state, go to StateVote 2006.
We had quite a blue cascade this year...
Posted by: Kenton Ngo | November 16, 2006 at 05:21 PM
It is an erroneous to infer from the fact that Democrats elected officers for the minority and Republicans elected officers for the majority in Pennsylvania that there is an agreement that the Republicans are the majority party for 2007-2008.
The fact is that no one knows at the current time who is going to be in the majority. Not knowing that, each party decided that the easier path was to proceed on the basis of the status quo, put a set of officers in place, and empower them to begin preparing for 2007-2008.
The Republican Speaker thus does not have to wage a battle with the Republican Majority Leader over the post of minority leader. Democrats spared ourselves a battle over the post of Speaker.
Both parties are actively pursuing victory in West Chester, where the Republicans hold a mere 19 vote lead, and are actively engaged in battle over two other seats, where the Republicans have leads of 133 and 136 votes.
We Pennsylvania Democrats would love nothing better than to come back in December with a majority as a result of our vote-counting and campaign efforts, and nominate a winning candidate for Speaker. Don't rule this out as a possibility. The corrrect listing for control of the Pennsylvania House should be "undetermined."
Posted by: Rep. Mark B. Cohen | November 19, 2006 at 09:24 AM