What NCSL’s Crystal Ball Says About the 2024 State Elections

What NCSL's Crystal Ball Says About the 2024 State Elections

The elections team breaks down the data and discusses key issues and trends.

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The only poll that matters is conducted by the voters on Nov. 5. (SDI Productions/Getty Images)

It's not the biggest election in U.S. history in terms of sheer number of candidates. Still, there's a lot up for grabs on Tuesday, Nov. 5.

"There are 5,808 legislative seats up for election out of 7,386 state legislative seats," Ben Williams says. "The territories add just under 200 more seats. That's a big election."

The official preelection tally: 57 states with Republican-held chambers, 41 with Democratic-held chambers, plus Nebraska's unicameral nonpartisan chamber and one split legislature in Pennsylvania.

"When one party is flipping chambers, it is almost always the only party flipping chambers."

-Ben Williams, NCSL

"That is the fewest splits nationwide since 1914," Williams, the associate director of NCSL's Elections and Redistricting team, told an NCSL Base Camp 2024 session. "It'll be interesting to see if that historic low continues to be tied, or if, after this election, we actually hit zero."

While the presidential race is the main event, the results don't always trickle down into state elections.

"When you're looking at the top of the ticket nationwide, that does not necessarily translate into results at the state legislative level," Williams says, pointing to a loss of 2.2% of Democratic legislators nationally in 2020. "Just because you see a result going a certain way at the top of the ticket does not mean you should assume that there will be a parallel result at the state legislative level."

State Legislatures: Narrower Swings

Williams highlights the states with the most competitive races for control of both chambers as Arizona, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Same goes for the houses in Michigan and Minnesota.

A red wave could potentially swing control of chambers in Delaware, Maine, Nevada and Oregon to Republicans, he adds. "If there's a blue wave nationally and it washes over Alaska and Georgia, Democrats might start thinking about outright majorities," Williams says.

Williams says the Tea Party wave of 2010 kicked off an era of increased consolidation at the state level. "Ever since then, we have been in a world where Republicans, not Democrats, hold a majority of state legislative seats nationwide," he says. "The switches since 2000 have been much narrower. We don't see the dramatic swings that we saw a century ago."

In the 2010 election, 22 chambers flipped from Democratic to Republican control, and none went the other way. In 2018, Democrats flipped nine chambers and Republicans did not flip any. Then in 2020, Republicans flipped three chambers to zero for Democrats. In 2022, Democrats flipped five chambers to none for Republicans.

"When one party is flipping chambers, it is almost always the only party flipping chambers," Williams says. "In 2023, there was one chamber flip. Democrats flipped the Virginia House of Delegates from Republican control. That is the third election in a row that the Virginia House of Delegates changed hands."

Williams offers a final prognostication for this year's legislative races: "No matter what happens, we're expecting the Republican edge nationwide to continue. It's almost certain it would have to be a massive Democratic rout for Democrats to pull even, let alone take an edge in seats or chambers nationwide."

Governorships: Few Surprises Forecast

In governors' offices nationwide, there are currently 27 Republicans and 23 Democrats. "Not all of these states follow what you might expect nationally," Williams says, citing Nevada, Kansas, Kentucky and Vermont. "The Republican governor of Vermont (Phil Scott) has the highest approval rating of any governor in the United States, so sometimes people really like their not-natural-party governor."

Of the 11 governorships up for election, only New Hampshire's is considered a toss-up by NCSL's partner, the Cook Political Report, and that's for an open seat. There haven't been many big flips in recent gubernatorial elections, either, the last one being the Republicans flipping the Louisiana governor's office in 2023. "That seat was held by Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat," Williams says. "He was term-limited and could not run again. It was considered a relatively safe pickup for the Republicans."

Once again, political consolidation is the national norm, he adds. "More people live in a Republican trifecta, where Republicans hold both chambers of the legislature and the governorship, or a Democratic trifecta than they do in states that have some government that's split between the two parties."

Ballot Measures

Helen Brewer, a policy specialist on NCSL's Elections and Redistricting team, is tracking this year's ballot measures. She says there are 150 total measures on ballots across the country, including legislative referrals, citizen initiatives and popular referenda, historically high but comparable to other recent elections.

"We are on par with the high numbers that we saw in 2016 and 2018," Brewer says. "The proportion of different types of ballot measures has been pretty consistent across all of these even-numbered years for the last 10 years, even as the overall numbers have changed."

Of this year's 150 measures, those related to taxes and bonds are most common, followed by measures involving civil and criminal justice, abortion and election law. NCSL's Statewide Ballot Measures Database covers the gamut of this year's measures.

"As always, we see many ballot measures related to taxes," Brewer says. "We see election ballot measures all over the map with their approaches to primaries, ranked choice voting and more. Another thing I will highlight, of course, is the sharp increase in the number of abortion-related ballot measures."

The only poll that matters, of course, is on Nov. 5. "We will be keeping track of all of it in our state election tracking that we do each year on X," Brewer says. "I hope you'll be along for the ride with us as we cover the election."

Eric Peterson is a Denver-based freelance writer.