The blue wave that swept Republicans from power in the United States didn’t just hit Congress. In Tuesday’s midterm elections, Democrats won hundreds of seats in state legislatures across the country, under-the-radar victories that could have major implications for life in America.
Even though the ballots are still being counted, the party’s success appears historic: Democrats have not won full control of government in Arizona for 60 years, in Pennsylvania since the 1990s and in Wisconsin since their elimination in 2010. In Michigan and Minnesota, they regained the lost trio after the 2024 elections, while in Texas they will control the House of Representatives for the first time since 2002.
The victories are so complete that the majority of Americans will live in states led by a Democratic governor, and in several states where the party has been out of power for years or even decades, Democrats are expected to embark on aggressive legislative sprees that will have nationwide implications.
“It was the most important night for the state legislature since the Republican seismic wave of 2010,” said Mandara Meyers, executive director of the States Project, which has supported Democrats seeking state legislative office in the midterms.
The result of their efforts, Meyers said, was the reverse of that pivotal election 16 years ago, when Republicans took power in a multitude of states and then redrew congressional and state legislative maps to extend their power while enacting conservative laws that persist to this day.
“Democrats now have more power in the states than at any other time in the 21st century, so we really are facing a fundamentally new legislative playing field,” Meyers said.
State legislatures have gained outsized importance in recent years, as U.S. Congresses have repeatedly found themselves mired in partisan gridlock that has left the priorities of both parties unaddressed. Red states took decisive steps to ban abortion, expand self-defense rights, and champion right-wing cultural causes such as banning Sharia law. Where Democrats govern, they have passed laws raising the minimum wage, preserving access to abortion, tackling the climate crisis, and regulating immigration enforcement.
After Tuesday’s election surge — one of the biggest electoral collapses Republicans have suffered in decades — Democrats will now have an opportunity to work through a long list of priorities and promises to voters.
“It’s a big delay for Arizona, a big delay for Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,” said Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of State Navigate, a nonprofit focused on the state Legislature, referring to states where Democrats have won the governing trio or are poised to do so once the results are finalized.
The party also won gubernatorial elections over Republicans in Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Texas, giving them control of a majority of governors for the first time since 2010. “More Democratic governors mean better lives for the millions of Americans who live in our states,” Democratic Governors Association leaders Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said in a statement.
In total, Democrats won 258 legislative seats nationwide, created six new governing trios, claimed 11 legislative chambers from the GOP and shattered the Republican supermajority in 10 states, according to Nuttycombe. Even though not all elections have been called, he predicts that about 76 percent of the country’s population will live under a Democratic governor and about half will be represented by one of the party’s lawmakers in their legislature.
The result appears to be a downstream blow to Republicans in the U.S. Congress, where Democrats are on track to secure a majority of at least 54 seats in the Senate and 237 seats in the House, the two largest margins for any party in years.
A major factor in the GOP’s destruction is the unpopularity of Donald Trump, whom most Republican lawmakers clung to even as polls indicated voters did not support his immigration crackdown, tariffs, war with Iran and domestic policy bill.
“This surge is driven by the economy and people’s dissatisfaction with the president — probably about 80 to 85 percent of what’s causing this situation is due to that,” Nuttycombe said. “And the rest may be a matter of attitude toward state government and the powers that be in general. There is a lot of anti-incumbency resentment, primarily toward incumbent Republicans.”
For Democrats poised to take control of Congress after the new year, the most pressing question is whether these new governing trios will join the national redistricting war that Trump ignited last year, when he encouraged Texas’ Republican state government to approve new maps that are expected to cost Democrats seats in the House of Representatives.
This sparked a tit-for-tat war with blue states, which doesn’t appear to have gained Republicans much – while some Democrats opted to withdraw after their seats were redrafted, none of those seeking re-election lost to Republicans. At least one new state legislative leader says he’s willing to embrace a new coin toss as part of their new Democratic trio.
“We’re going to look at redistricting in Congress,” Greta Neubauer, who is expected to lead the Wisconsin state assembly after Democrats won a 53-seat majority, said on a call with reporters Wednesday.
“We have redistricted maps in Wisconsin. They favor Republicans by a large margin, and we know that other states will be considering redistricting efforts in the coming months that will attempt to further strengthen Republican power, and so we will be considering a congressional redistricting effort in Wisconsin.”
It’s part of what she called a “big list” of priorities for a party that Republicans put firmly in the minority in 2010 and have set out to make Wisconsin a laboratory for conservative policies, despite its tradition as a purple state. The new Democratic majority will also consider, Neubauer said, measures to expand Medicaid or other public health care options, as well as access to free school meals, two policies that the Legislature’s Republican leaders have opposed.
The same year Republicans swept Wisconsin, they also took full control of the state government in North Carolina, ending more than a century of nearly uninterrupted Democratic dominance. On Tuesday, the party won back a majority in its legislature’s lower house and narrowed the gap in the Republican-controlled state Senate, even as close elections continue.
The GOP has now lost the supermajorities it used to override the will of the state’s recent Democratic governors, but it will still have a significant check on power. Tiffany Reynolds-Richardson, executive director of Lillian’s List, which has supported seven female candidates who helped Democrats advance to the House of Representatives, said it nevertheless represents a paradigm shift in North Carolina, which has seen some of the most partisan state politics in the country.
“The Republicans are going to have to play ball now, right?” » said Reynolds-Richardson. “To get what they want or need, they’re going to have to mess with the Democrats now.”
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