Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.
State legislative Republicans hope to build on their flip of Virginia’s state House last year — and a slate of GOP candidates running hard against President Joe Biden — to make more inroads in Democratic-held legislatures this fall, while defending their turf.
The Republican State Leadership Committee’s target list of legislative chambers, shared first with POLITICO, focuses first on defending majorities in familiar battleground states. Republicans have unified control of legislatures in nearly all of the presidential battlegrounds, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. But the margins are often small: Across the six chambers in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Republicans have a combined margin of just 24 seats.
While defending key chambers the GOP already has is the “main goal this cycle,” according to the RSLC’s memo accompanying its target list, the party is also emboldened by its 2021 successes in Virginia and narrowing Democratic majorities in New Jersey. Republicans also hope to press the attack in states like Colorado and Minnesota, along with chipping away at Democratic majorities in other blue strongholds with an eye on making further inroads later this decade.
“Voters are looking for a counterbalance,” Dee Duncan, the president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, said in an interview. “I think that’s what Republicans on the ballot are going to be this fall. I think there’s going to be places that we’re able to play in that we haven’t in the past, and I think we’ll be able to defend our places that we won.”
The RSLC’s legislative target list does not vary dramatically from that of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which laid out its battleground nearly a year ago to POLITICO. But Duncan argues that a year’s worth of new data, from the recent victories to Biden’s approval ratings nationally and in key states, puts Republicans in a good position to capitalize in increasingly nationalized legislative races.
