The Patriot Post® · Dems Fail to Flip State Legislatures

As the outcome of the presidential election still hangs in the balance with various reports of voting irregularities, there is some good news for Republicans at the state level. Let’s just say the results were not the seismic shift Democrats were hoping for. We’ll hit some notables.

Over the weekend, we reported that Democrats hoped to flip 10 of the 59 Republican-controlled state legislative chambers. There were also 11 governorships contested in the election, and Dems hoped to pick off a couple. In an effort to achieve their goal, Democrats and their super PACs pumped in tens of millions of dollars into state races. As in U.S. Senate races, they got a poor return on investment.

To put it mildly, the Democrats’ hopes didn’t materialize. In fact, they failed to turn even one state chamber. On the contrary, Republicans flipped two state chambers and one governorship. That also gives Republicans two more trifectas — control of the governorship and both legislative houses. The Hill reports, “Instead of big Democratic gains, early election results appear to show Republicans picked up enough seats to win control of at least two legislative chambers, the New Hampshire state Senate and the Alaska state House, where Republicans appear to be in a position to break a bipartisan coalition that ran the House for the last two years.”

Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists have been touting that Texas will turn blue any time now. Really. Any time. It has yet to happen, however, and that now includes the Dems’ failed attempt to flip the state House. In fact, after all that effort and money, the chamber will look something close to the previous 83-67 Republican advantage.

In Montana, Republican Representative Greg Gianforte won the governorship to side with a GOP-controlled state legislature. Likewise, in New Hampshire, Republican Governor Chris Sununu will now get to work with a GOP state legislature. In Pennsylvania, Republicans seem to have netted seats in both the state House and Senate, and North Carolina Republicans picked up four more state House seats.

Prior to the election, RealClearPolitics reported, “Overall, there are 7,383 legislative seats in the United States. Republicans hold 3,820 (52%) of these to Democrats’ 3,436 (47%). Another 127 seats are held by independents, other parties or are currently vacant.” Democrats have been playing catch-up at the state level since 2010, when Barack Obama led them to disastrous defeat in losing 900 legislative seats around the country. Years of clawing back have brought them a bit closer, but Republicans still hold the advantage, and that matters a lot in a post-census redistricting year.

That’s why, as the Associated Press noted before the election, “[Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric] Holder’s group has given money to 261 state legislative candidates who could influence redistricting in 11 states.” And, significantly, “According to the Republican committee, the outcome of as few as 42 state legislative races in 10 states could determine control of as many as 136 seats in Congress, when accounting for the potential swing from the most Republican-leaning maps to the most Democratic-tilted districts that could be drawn by the victors.”

To reiterate, with all the massive amounts of money spent in state races, Democrats have little to show for it. Tim Storey, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures, said of the spending, “It was unprecedented. It was off the charts. The big winners were the TV stations and the direct mail people.” Maybe these results explain why Democrats are such big proponents of campaign-finance reform — they need something to keep a check on their own runaway spending.

(Edited.)