Party Balance in Midwestern Legislatures

by Karl Kurtz

The state legislative election map in the Midwest shows more balance than that of any other region, with three prairie states plus Missouri under Republican control, the central midwestern states led by Democrats, and split majorities in the eastern wing of the region.

The big prizes of the 2008 election were the Ohio House and the Wisconsin Assembly, where Democrats gained a net of six and five seats, respectively, to take the majority in those chambers for the first time since the 1994 election.

Ohio and Wisconsin may have provided the most crucial swings for the Democrats, but they picked up the most seats (nine) in the Michigan House, which had switched to the Democrats in 2006. Michigan Republicans may be feeling lucky that there were no elections in the Senate this year (as was also true in Minnesota), thus enabling them to maintain their 21-17 majority. 2010, when all Michigan Senate seats are up, is likely to be a better year for Republicans to run.

Across the region as a whole, Democrats had a net gain of 40 seats compared to 2006 results, almost all in houses of representatives. There was a net change of only one--to the Republicans--in senate seats in the Midwest.

The title of "ticket-splittingest" state probably belongs to Indiana (in competition with Vermont in the East). Sen. Barack Obama carried the state with 50 percent of the vote to Sen. McCain's 49 percent by winning only 15 of 92 counties. But Republican Governor Mitch Daniels was reelected with 58 percent of the vote, winning 77 of the state's 92 counties. Obama carried Indianapolis by 105,000 votes, but Daniels managed a 50,000 vote majority in that city. With all of this split-ticket voting at the top of the ballot, the net change in the Legislature was a gain of only one seat in the House for the Democrats. The Senate remains under Republican control by a 33-17 margin.

Other gubernatorial elections in the region were in Missouri, where Democrats gained their only governor's office in this election, and North Dakota, where Gov. John Hoeven (R) was handily reelected. Control of state government is unified under Republican control of the governor's office and both legislative chambers in North Dakota and South Dakota, unified under Democrat control in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin, and divided between the two parties in the other six states in the region that have partisan elections.

Some odds and ends in midwestern balloting:

Michigan House Speaker Andy Dillon won three elections last week: he won his district election and beat back a recall effort against him on election day and was reelected speaker two days later by his colleagues.
The most Republican chamber in the Midwest is the Kansas Senate with 78 percent of the seats under GOP control, followed by the Missouri Senate with 68 percent and the Indiana Senate with 66 percent.
The strongest chambers for the Democrats are the Minnesota Senate at 69 percent, the Minnesota House (which was controlled by Republicans up until two years ago) at 65 percent Democrats and the Illinois Senate at 63 percent.
The North Dakota Legislature had an unusually large number of close elections with five of them being decided by less than 200 votes. A mandatory recount will take place in Senate district 10, where NCSL past president David Nething (R), the most senior member of the Senate, won by a margin of 10 votes.