The 2024 United States state legislative elections were held on November 5, 2024, for 85 state legislative chambers in 44 states. Across the fifty states, approximately 65 percent of all upper house seats and 85 percent of all lower house seats were up for election. Nine legislative chambers in the five permanently inhabited U.S. territories and the federal district of Washington, D.C., also held elections. The elections take place concurrently with several other federal, state, and local elections, including the presidential election, U.S. Senate elections, U.S. House elections, and gubernatorial elections.
Prior to the election, Republicans controlled 56 legislative chambers, while Democrats controlled 41. Both chambers of the Alaska Legislature were controlled by bipartisan coalitions. The states of Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania were expected to hold the most competitive elections for legislative control. Additionally, court-ordered redistricting in Wisconsin was expected to lead to Democratic gains in both chambers of the Wisconsin Legislature. Favorable redistricting from Montana's independent redistricting commission was also expected to lead to Democratic gains in that state.
Despite Republican nominee Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election, Republicans made very modest gains in state legislative chambers across the country, flipping only one chamber and forcing a tie in another.
Background
The 2022 elections, midterm elections held under the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden, defied conventional expectations. Although Republicans had gained more legislative seats across the country than Democrats, they had lost control of several state legislative chambers. Republican gains were more concentrated in chambers they already controlled, while Democrats made more gains in states they controlled, as well as in battleground states where independent or court-ordered redistricting had dismantled the Republican-tilted maps of the 2010s. This enhanced Democratic policymaking power at the state level despite Republican victories at the federal level. This trend continued in 2023, where Democrats won the most competitive chambers while Republicans padded their margins in the Deep South. Heading into the 2024 elections, Republicans controlled 56 state legislative chambers to the Democrats' 41.
Alongside each state's governor, this meant that 40 states, housing 82% of the population, had government trifectas, where one party controls the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, the most in modern history. Republicans had 23 trifectas, while Democrats only had 17. Four more states had legislatures where one party's supermajority could override the veto of a governor of the opposite party, leaving only 9% of the country's population living in states with truly divided governments. The increasing prevalence of one-party control had led to starker divergence of state policies between Democratic-controlled and Republican-controlled states over the past decade on a number of key issues not governed at the federal level. Rampant gerrymandering and political polarization has contributed to this as well, leaving large swaths of districts uncontested in the general election, and especially in primary elections.
Party switching A number of incumbent state legislators switched parties in the leadup to the 2024 election, with most of them leaving the Democratic Party and joining the Republican Party. StateChamberDistrictLegislatorOld partyNew partySourceCaliforniaSenate4Marie Alvarado-GilDemocraticRepublicanKansasSenate1Dennis PyleIndependentRepublicanNebraskaLegislature5Mike McDonnellDemocraticRepublicanNew HampshireHouseBelknap 4Matthew CokerDemocraticRepublicanMerrimack 8Sherry GouldDemocraticRepublicanOregonHouse12Charlie ConradRepublicanIndependentTexasHouse146Shawn ThierryDemocraticRepublican Issues State legislative elections took a back seat in the minds of most voters due to the highly contentious presidential election on the top of the ticket in every state. Despite this, however, a few key issues permeated most of these elections. Chief among them were abortion rights, gun rights, environmental regulations, and laws regarding transgender people. Recent Supreme Court rulings had reduced federal power on these issues, charging states with crafting their own individual policies. Both parties spent millions of dollars on these races, with other long-term issues such as redistricting also in the back of their minds, while conceding that the results of the presidential election would likely heavily dictate the results of the state legislative elections.
Several states featured their own key issues in legislative races, with these usually coming up during each state's primary election. These included school vouchers in Tennessee and Texas, as well as a carbon capture pipeline in South Dakota. A number of Republican-led states, including Idaho, Missouri, South Carolina, and Wyoming saw growth in their "freedom caucuses" as well, with substantial primary challenges waged against "establishment" Republicans, especially those in leadership. In other states where one party solidly controlled the legislature but the opposite party controlled the governorship, like Kansas, Nevada, North Carolina, and Vermont, their general elections determined the efficacy of each governor's veto power.
Summary table Regularly scheduled elections were held in 85 of the 99 state legislative chambers in the United States. Nationwide, regularly scheduled elections were held for 5,809 of the 7,383 legislative seats. Many legislative chambers held elections for all seats, but some legislative chambers that use staggered elections held elections for only a portion of the total seats in the chamber. The chambers not up for election either hold regularly scheduled elections in odd-numbered years or have four-year terms and hold all regularly scheduled elections in presidential midterm election years.
Note that this table only covers regularly scheduled elections; additional special elections took place concurrently with these regularly scheduled elections.
State Upper house Lower house Seats up Total % up Term Seats up Total % up TermAlabama03504010504Alaska102050440401002Arizona3030100260601002Arkansas1835512/41001001002California204050480801002 Colorado183551465651002 Connecticut363610021511511002 Delaware1021522/441411002 Florida2040502/41201201002 Georgia565610021801801002 Hawaii1225522/451511002 Idaho3535100270701002 Illinois2059342/41181181002 Indiana25505041001001002 Iowa25505041001001002 Kansas404010041251251002 Kentucky19385041001001002 Louisiana03904010504 Maine353510021511511002 Maryland04704014104 Massachusetts404010021601601002 Michigan038041101101002 Minnesota06702/41341341002 Mississippi05204012204 Missouri17345041631631002 Montana25505041001001002 Nebraska2549514 N/A (unicameral) Nevada102148442421002 New Hampshire242410024004001002 New Jersey04002/408002 New Mexico4242100470701002 New York636310021501501002 North Carolina505010021201201002 North Dakota23474944694504 Ohio163348499991002 Oklahoma24485041011011002 Oregon153050460601002 Pennsylvania25505042032031002 Rhode Island3838100275751002 South Carolina464610041241241002 South Dakota3535100270701002 Tennessee163348499991002 Texas1531522/41501501002 Utah152952475751002 Vermont303010021501501002 Virginia04004010002 Washington254951498981002 West Virginia17345041001001002 Wisconsin163348499991002 Wyoming153148462621002 Total1096197365N/A4712541387N/A
Redistricting
A number of states underwent mid-decade redistricting prior to the 2024 elections. Some states only changed a few districts, while others implemented entirely new maps. In Georgia, Michigan and North Dakota, and Washington, judges ruled that certain districts violated the Voting Rights Act. Georgia and Michigan failed to protect African American communities of interest while North Dakota and Washington failed to protect Native American and Hispanic communities of interest respectively.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped from a conservative to a liberal majority in 2023, directly leading to the overturning of the state's legislative districts in Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission. The legislature then passed new maps drawn by Democratic governor Tony Evers to avoid the possibility of the courts imposing their own maps. In Ohio, the state had to draw new legislative maps due to the Ohio Supreme Court repeatedly striking down maps prior to the 2022 elections. The state's seven-member politician commission unanimously passed new maps despite the commission's two Democratic members considering them to still be unfair.
Montana held its elections under new lines drawn by the state's independent redistricting commission. Unlike every other state, Montana does not implement new legislative districts until the fourth year following the census. The North Carolina Supreme Court, which flipped to Republican control in 2022, overturned its previous ruling prohibiting partisan gerrymandering, enabling the Republican-controlled legislature to pass new maps seen as highly favorable to them. As part of the litigation in a racial gerrymandering case in South Carolina, which primarily concerned the state's first congressional district, the plaintiffs in the case agreed to drop their challenge to the state House's map in exchange for the legislature passing changes to a small set of districts. Though this occurred in 2022, the new maps did not take effect until 2024.
Most expected the new legislative maps in Montana and Wisconsin to lead to large Democratic gains in both houses of each state's legislature.
Electoral predictions Several sites and individuals publish predictions of competitive chambers. These predictions look at factors such as the strength of the party, the strength of the candidates, and the partisan leanings of the state (reflected in part by the state's Cook Partisan Voting Index rating). The predictions assign ratings to each chambers, with the rating indicating the predicted advantage that a party has in winning that election.
Analysts' predictions for competitive state legislative chambers largely mirrored the states they considered competitive in the presidential election, with some exceptions. Presidential battlegrounds Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina were not considered competitive due to heavy gerrymandering in each state, while both legislative chambers in Alaska, Minnesota, and New Hampshire were considered competitive despite not being characterized as presidential battlegrounds. In line with national predictions of an unpredictable and competitive presidential election, many analysts, including Louis Jacobson of Sabato's Crystal Ball saw neither party as having a distinct advantage towards making gains at the state legislative level, although others, including CNalysis, gave Democrats a slight edge in both net seat gain and net chamber gain, owed in part to favorable redistricting.
Most election predictors use: "Tossup": No advantage "Tilt": Advantage that is not quite as strong as "lean" "Lean": Slight advantage "Likely": Significant, but surmountable, advantage "Safe" or "Solid": Near-certain chance of victory
State PVI Chamber Lastelection CNalysis Sabato Result Alaska rowspan=2 Senate Coal. 17–3 | style="background:#b8b" data-sort-value=-4.1 | Solid Coal. | data-sort-value=-2 | Lean Coal. Coal. 14–6 House Coal. 23–16–1 | | Coal. 21–19 Arizona rowspan=2 Senate R 16–14
| R 17–13 House R 31–29 | | R 33–27 Arkansas rowspan=2 Senate R 29–6 | | R 29–6 House R 82–18 | | R 81–19 California rowspan=2 Senate D 32–8 | | D 30–10 Assembly D 62–18 | | D 60–20 Colorado rowspan=2 Senate D 23–12 | | D 23–12 House D 46–19 | | D 43–22 Connecticut rowspan=2 Senate D 24–12 | | D 25–11 House D 98–53 | | D 102–49 Delaware rowspan=2 Senate D 15–6 | | D 15–6 House D 26–15 |