Partisan Composition During the 2016 Legislative Session via National Conference of State Legislatures
Friday the 13th projections
by Tom Sullivan
Partisan Composition During the 2016 Legislative Session via National Conference of State Legislatures
Redistricting occurs again in 2021, so keep an eye on opportunities this fall to whittle away at the effects of the GOP's REDMAP effort from 2010. The T-party takeover of state legislatures needs to be reversed. I mean, North Carolina? Wisconsin? Beuhler?
Over at Daily Kos, teacherken points to Benchmark's weekly electoral map:
Weekly update on the electoral map. Polls <90 days old averaged, beige states <3% spread in polls. Trump v Clinton. pic.twitter.com/RJyyi6OwxC
— Benchmark Politics (@benchmarkpol) May 12, 2016
We are still pretty far out, of course. But if you are interested in knowing where (or even being where) the fights will be this fall, swing states bear watching. As much as congressional and senate races will draw attention, much of the real action these days is in the state legislatures. Presidential campaign heat in the swing states -- coattails -- can be a factor in how those state races play out. How the balance shifts in the states has much more of an immediate effect on the national trajectory than what happens in a gridlocked Washington, D.C.
As for the Electoral College, Harry Enten cautions at FiveThirtyEight, "Winning the national popular vote typically means winning the presidency; the Electoral College matters only in very close elections, and most of the time not even then." National polling averages, he says, are what to watch for now.