What’s happening down the ballot could bring surprises

The presidential race has gripped the country and led to a massive increase in voter registrations. What impact, if any, is that going to have on races far down the ballot?

This is one of the most crucial questions of the election year. To understand why a race for the state senate in Minnesota or the state house in Florida matters so much, consider how we got to the place we’re at now in national politics.

Over the two terms Barack Obama was in office, the balance of power in state legislatures changed more than in any period since Herbert Hoover’s administration. Democrats lost a total of 948 seats in legislatures across the country, and Republicans picked up 29 house or senate chambers in 19 states.

These contrasting developments, Democratic success at the national level and dramatic Republican gains at the state level are the mold that has formed today’s politics. Without the maps drawn by legislatures that flipped during this period, Republicans wouldn’t have a thin majority in the U.S. House. Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 and Joe Biden’s win in 2020 both come from this mold.

The impact on the abortion issue makes this political division and its ricocheting effects especially clear. The chain of court challenges that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade involved laws passed by legislatures with new or greater Republican majorities. The tendency of these legislatures has been to amplify the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision by enacting very restrictive and sweeping abortion laws, practically ensuring a stronger political backlash in a country where nearly two-thirds of those polled say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

The massive shifts in legislatures that occurred during the Obama administration were too seismic to be reversed in a generation, much less a single election. Even so, there’s a lot at stake in legislative races this year, and we know strikingly little about what’s going on at that level of the political contest.

These races aren’t polled nearly as heavily as those for Congress or the presidency, and to be accurate, polls would have to be adjusted to account for the increase in registrations since Kamala Harris entered the presidential race. Many of these new voters won’t go past the top race on the ballot, but in many cases they could have a much greater impact on those races further down the ballot. New voters could make a difference in a lot of state legislative races in states where they can’t change the outcome.

Another question has to do with the two parties’ ground games. In Trump’s big shakeup of the Republican National Committee back in March, dozens of regional and state directors, the kind of party officials who pay attention to legislative races, were fired, and plans were announced for the farming out of a lot of down-ballot activities. How’s that going to affect these races?

One of the nation’s most important legislative elections has already been decided, with the defeat of 15 Republican incumbents in Texas and the narrow survival of House Speaker Dade Phelan. Without getting into the mesquite, this was a battle between hard-right and moderate forces, which the hard-right mostly won.

Minnesota was already shaping up to be an interesting state to watch, even before Gov. Tim Walz was tapped to be Harris’ running mate. A special election could break a 33-33 tie in the state senate, and Democrats are defending a narrow four-vote majority in the state house.

Republicans in Florida hold a supermajority in the state house, but Democrats are challenging every seat this year for the first time in several elections. Democrats are in no shape to change the balance of power in Georgia this year either, but they hope to make gains. No matter how it turns out, as a reflection of the political tensions that have roiled the nation, there may not be a better legislative race in the country than the Georgia Senate race between incumbent Republican Shawn Still, one of the indictees in the Fulton County false electors case, and Ashwin Ramaswami, a 24-year-old Democrat who worked for the federal government on programs to protect local election site from cyber attacks.