Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation comes to Oregon, a rare state where Democrats have control over both the governorship and both houses of the legislature. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new data sets; you can also find all of our calculations from 2016 and past cycles here.
Oregon Democrats have controlled the governorship since Republican Vic Atiyeh left office in 1987, but the GOP held onto the legislature for a bit longer. In 2004, Democrats took control of the state Senate, and they've held it ever since. Team Blue flipped the state House two years later, but after the 2010 GOP wave, the chamber was deadlocked 30-30.
With no means to break the tie in either direction, Democrats and Republicans agreed to a power-sharing agreement where each party would have one co-speaker: One co-speaker would preside over the House one day, and the other would take over the next. Team Blue grabbed an outright majority in the House in 2012, and they've held onto it. In 2016, Democrats won a 17-13 Senate majority and a 35-25 House edge. The entire House is up every two years, while half the Senate is up in midterm years and the other half is up in presidential cycles.
We'll start with a look at the state Senate. Oregon swung a little to the right last year, going from 55-42 Obama to 52-41 Clinton. Clinton carried 20 of the 30 Senate seats, trading two Obama districts for three Romney seats. Both of the Obama/Trump seats are still held by Democrats.
SD-05, which includes Oregon's central Pacific coast, lurched from 53-44 Obama to 49-44 Trump, but Democratic incumbent Arnie Roblan (who was the Democratic co-speaker of the House from 2011 to 2012), won 48.2-47.7. Democratic state Sen. Betsy Johnson, who considered running for governor last year as an independent, was not up last year. Her SD-16, which includes Oregon's northwest corner, went from 52-44 Obama to 47-45 Trump.
The three Romney/Clinton seats all were close in both presidential elections, and all are held by Republicans. The only member of this trio who was up last year was Tim Knopp, who won 61-39 as his Bend-area SD-27 went from 50-48 Romney to 48-45 Clinton. SD-10, a Salem-area seat held by Jackie Winters, moved from 50-48 Romney to a slim 46.2-46.0, while Kim Thatcher's SD-13 went from 51-47 Romney to 47-45 Clinton.
Two Republicans represent Obama/Clinton seats. Alan DeBoer flipped an open Democratic-held seat 50.3-49.7 last year as his Medford-area SD-03 went from 53-43 Obama to 51-42 Clinton. Chuck Thomsen, who was not up last year, holds SD-26 east of Portland, which went from 52-45 Obama to 49-44 Clinton. No Democrats hold Romney/Trump seats.
Over in the state House, Clinton carried 36 of the 60 seats, losing three Obama seats while taking no Romney districts. Once again, all three Obama/Trump seats are held by Democrats. The Trumpiest seat in the bunch is HD-09, which makes up half of the territory in Arnie Roblan's aforementioned SD-05 (in Oregon, two House seats are nested within each Senate district). Democrat Caddy McKeown won re-election 50-46 as her seat went from 49-48 Obama to 53-40 Trump.
No Democrats represent Romney seats, while four Republicans hold Obama/Clinton districts. The bluest of the bunch is HD-37, located south of Portland. Republican Julie Parrish won re-election 54-44 even as her seat swung left hard, going from 53-45 Obama to 57-35 Clinton. Republican Knute Buehler, who is leaving the House to run for governor next year, won re-election by a smaller 52-48 even while his Bend-area HD-54 moved from 54-43 Obama to 56-36 Clinton.
If Democrats had managed to keep just one extra state House seat in 2010 they may have been able to draw their own legislative maps, but both parties ended up agreeing to a bipartisan plan. The current maps favor the GOP a bit, though not by an overwhelming amount. One way to illustrate this is to sort each seat in the House by Clinton's margin of victory over Trump to see how the seat in the middle—known as the median seat—voted.
Because both chambers have an even number of seats, we average the two middle seats to come up with the median point in the chamber. Clinton won the median point in the Senate 50-42, about 3 points to the right of her statewide win, and won the median point in the House by a similar 51-42 margin.
