While the national political dialogue has focused on the U.S. House and Senate campaigns, there’s a lot more to Election Day at the state and local level. On Tuesday, voters will also elect
6,097 state legislators around the country.[1]
Republicans gained nearly 1,000 state legislative seats during President Obama’s time in office, and Democrats are hoping to win back some of those seats now that a Republican is in the White House. Twenty-two state legislative chambers are rated as battlegrounds by Ballotpedia, meaning that the elections could flip control of the chamber from one party to the other.
Ballotpedia analysis shows that eight state government trifectas are highly vulnerable. A state government trifecta is a term to describe single-party government, when one political party holds the governorship, a majority in the state senate, and a majority in the state house.
Trifectas at risk include five held by Republicans (Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin) and three held by Democrats (Connecticut, Delaware, and Oregon).
Looking beyond the state legislatures, countless local officials will also be elected on Tuesday. There are approximately 519,000 elected officials in the nation serving 87,576 official governing bodies. That includes everything from school boards and county commissioners all the way up to president of the United States.
Footnotes:
- This number includes 6,073 regularly scheduled elections along with 24 special elections.
Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," "In Search of Self-Governance," and "The People’s Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt." Read more reports from Scott Rasmussen — Click Here Now.
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