By Karl Kurtz
Divided government refers to the condition of a state having a governor of one party and at least one chamber of the legislature of the opposite party. Here's the lineup of divided and unified governments post-2012 election compared to 2010:
|
Post-2012 |
Post-2010 |
|
|
Unified Democratic |
14 |
11 |
|
Unified Republican |
23 |
18 |
|
Divided |
12 |
20 |
The 2012 election saw a significant decline in the number of states with divided government. It's the lowest number of states with divided government since 1952, when there were eight. This rivals our previously reported factoid that we have the lowest number of legislatures with split control (three) since 1944.
Following portions of post modified at 4 p.m., MST, 7-Oct-2012.
Both of these statistics seem to reflect a growing polarization of states—almost all of them are either one party or the other, not mixed. But the number of states with divided government bounces around over time, as seen in the following chart:
The number of states with divided government peaked at 31 in 1988 and 1996. It has decline precipitously since 2004. Of course, a decrease in divided government necessarily means an increae in unified government. In the last two election cycles, Republicans have benefited more from this equation than Democrats.
Are these continuing trends? We'll probably have to wait for a few more elections to know for sure.
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