Now that the 2015 state legislative elections have concluded, we have updated our national collection of interactive state legislative district maps. Four states states held their legislative general elections last fall—Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and New Jersey—and we have maps for all but the Magnolia State. Using the 2012 presidential election results by district that Daily Kos Elections has calculated, our interactive maps detail which party holds each district and which party’s presidential ticket last won it. They also include broader statistics on each seat.
For each map, solid blue indicates seats won by Barack Obama and held by a Democratic legislator; solid red is for seats won by Mitt Romney and held by a Republican legislator. Lighter blue districts went for Romney but elected a Democratic legislator, while ligher red districts went for Obama but elected a Republican legislator.
New Jersey’s state Assembly uses two-member districts, and a handful of those elected a split delegation of one Democrat and one Republican while voting for Obama; these are shown in the lightest shade of red. (Romney did not win any districts that feature split delegations.) And finally, any districts held by independents are shaded green.
Virginia Democrats narrowly failed to retake the state Senate majority by just a single seat in 2015’s elections, which saw no net change in the overall partisan balance. The party drew the map in 2011, but it wound up with a very mediocre gerrymander negotiated as a bipartisan compromise. As part of this “compromise,” Republicans were permitted to aggressively gerrymandering the House of Delegates in exchange, yielded a truly terrible deal for Democrats.
Still, Obama won a 21 of the 40 Senate seats. However, he carried the median two seats by an average of just 50 to 49, which was 3 percent worse than his 51-47 margin of victory statewide in 2012. That discrepancy gives an advantage to the Republicans: If the median district were as blue as the statewide results, the GOP would have a much harder time capturing the chamber.
What’s more, thanks in large part to the absence of statewide races, 2015 saw very weak turnout, which invariably helps the GOP. As a result, Republicans were able to hold onto two of those Obama seats to maintain their slim 21-to-19 majority. Democrats will have a chance to retake the chamber when it is up again in 2019.
Virginia House of Delegates
Romney carried 53 districts while just 47 went for Obama. That makes Virginia’s lower chamber one of 11 nationwide where, thanks to aggressive gerrymandering, Romney won a majority of districts despite Obama winning the popular vote in the state. (You won't be surprised to learn that there isn’t a single chamber anywhere that features a majority of seats won by Obama in a state lost by Obama.) The median seats supported Romney by 50 to 48, which was 6 points more Republican than the state—and even wider GOP advantage than in the Senate.
In 2015 Democrats netted just one seat, which was enough to break the Republicans' previously veto-proof majority. But that still left Democrats deep in the whole, with only 34 seats to 66 for Team Red. Republicans hold 13 districts that Obama carried, again, but thanks to odd-year, non-gubernatorial turnout, many of those would saw electorates that favored Romney.
Louisiana state Senate
Romney carried 28 Louisiana state Senate districts while Obama won just 11. Thanks to another Republican gerrymander, the median seat voted for Romney 66-34, which was 16 points redder than the state. In 2015, when Democrats successfully gained the governor's office, they also made a net gain of one seat to break the Republican supermajority by a single seat, but Republicans still hold a commanding 25-to-14 advantage. Democrats hold three Romney districts while Republicans hold none that Obama carried. Both houses of the Louisiana legislature are elected to four-year terms, and legislators are limited to 12 years in each chamber.
Louisiana state House of Representatives
Romney carried 74 seats to Obama’s 31 in the lower chamber. The median seat went for Romney by 68 to 31, which was 20 points wider than his statewide margin, or more than double. That disparity is the worst of any legislative chamber in the country, demonstrating the power of Louisiana’s Republican gerrymander. Republicans gained two seats from Democrats in 2015 for 61 seats overall, one of which Obama actually carried. Democrats are down to 42 seats, 12 of which Romney won, while two independents hold dark red seats.
State Rep. Jerry Gisclair holds Obama’s worst legislative district of any Democrat in the country. Romney carried the 54th District along the coast south of New Orleans by 81 to 17, but in 2015 Gisclair won reelection unopposed to his third and final term.
New Jersey state Assembly
A bipartisan commission handles redistricting in New Jersey, but in 2011 the panel’s independent tiebreaker chose the Democratic proposal for the legislature’s map. Both the Senate and the Assembly use the same lines, but the lower chamber elects two members per district. Obama won 56 seats to just 24 for Romney, and the median seat went for the president by 59 to 40, which was 1 percent better than his statewide victory. That favors the Democrats, of course, but it’s quite small compared to the size of the GOP’s advantages for all the other maps discussed above in this piece.
Democrats hold 52 seats, while Republicans are down to just 28 seats, four of which Obama carried. 2015 saw Democrats net four seats for their largest Assembly majority since 1979, while the state Senate is only elected in years ending in 1, 3, and 7.
