Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation comes to Kansas, a solidly red state where the GOP has huge majorities in the legislature but where moderate Republicans have been regaining influence. 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.
Republicans have controlled both chambers of the Kansas legislature for decades, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon. In November, the GOP won a massive 31-to-9 Senate majority, with Democrats netting one seat. Team Blue netted 12 House seats last year, but Team Red still holds a strong 85-40 edge. But below the surface, GOP Gov. Sam Brownback and his conservative allies took a major hit last year.
The Kansas Republican Party has seen decades of infighting between its moderate and conservative wings, and until recently, the conservatives were on the upswing. But Brownback's disastrous tax cuts have devastated the state economy and breathed new life into the moderates. Last year, moderate Republicans channeled voter disgust over education funding and the state's budget problems and unseated several conservative legislators in primaries. In June, the state Senate voted 27-13 to override Brownback's veto and roll back his tax cuts, while the state House vote was 88 to 31.
Now to the numbers. We'll start with the state House, which is up every two years. Despite the state GOP's problems, Kansas barely budged at the presidential level, going from a 60-38 Romney win to a 57-36 Trump victory. Romney carried 96 of the 125 House seats, while Trump took 91. However, Trump lost six Romney seats to Clinton and only flipped one Obama district.
There was also quite a bit of ticket-splitting. Thirteen Democrats represent Trump seats, while seven Republicans hold Clinton turf. Republicans hold four of the six Romney/Clinton seats and three Obama/Clinton districts, while Democrats hold the only Obama/Trump seat and 12 Romney/Trump districts.
While Trump did better than Romney in most of the state, one big exception was in Johnson County.
This large and affluent Kansas City suburb still backed Trump, but his 47-44 victory there was considerably weaker than Romney's 58-40 win. Not surprisingly, all six of those Romney/Clinton seats are located entirely in Johnson County. The biggest swing to the left in this group was in HD-20, which went from 61-38 Romney to 48-46 Clinton. Freshman state Rep. Jan Kessinger defeated a conservative incumbent in the primary 55-45 and won the general election 65-35.
The Republican in the bluest seat is Melissa Rooker, another Johnson County legislator. Rooker won her third term 59-41 as her district went from a narrow 50-48 Obama victory to 59-33 Clinton. The one Republican in a Clinton seat who does not represent Johnson County is Thomas Sloan, a moderate who has served in the state House since 1995. Sloan's HD-45, which is located in the Lawrence area in next-door Douglas County, went from 55-43 Obama to 59-33 Clinton, but Sloan won 55-45.
The two Democrats in Romney/Clinton seats won their seats by defeating Johnson County Republicans in the general election. Democrat Cindy Holscher won 56-44 as her seat swung from 56-42 Romney to 47-46 Clinton, while Brett Parker won 53-47 as his district flipped from 54-45 Romney to 49-44 Clinton.
We'll turn to the 13 Democrats in Trump seats. The reddest of the bunch is HD-111, which is located around Hays in the middle of the state. This seat backed Romney 71-27 and Trump 69-24, but Democrat Eber Phelps unseated Republican incumbent Sue Boldra 54-46; four years before, Boldra unseated Phelps, an eight-term incumbent, 55-45. Phelps, who was mayor of Hays, attacked Boldra for supporting Brownback's agenda during his successful rematch campaign.
Another nine Democrats represent seats where Trump beat Clinton by at least a 10-point margin, and five members of that group unseated a Republican incumbent last year. Democrat Patsy Terrell also beat a GOP incumbent 56-44 to claim HD-102, which is located in Hutchinson, even as her seat went from 52-45 Romney to 54-37 Trump. Terrell died of natural causes in June, and Democrat Jason Probst was selected by the county Democrats to fill her seat. (There are no special elections for state legislative seats in Kansas.) The one Obama/Trump seat is HD-33, which is located in the Wyandotte County in the Kansas City area. This seat went from 53-45 Obama to a very narrow 46.81-46.77 Trump, but Democratic incumbent Tom Burroughs was re-elected without any opposition.
We'll turn to the state Senate, which is only up in presidential years. Trump carried 33 of the 40 seats, losing two Romney districts. Both Romney/Clinton seats are held by the GOP, and unsurprisingly, both are in Johnson County. Dinah Sykes unseated a GOP incumbent in the primary 58-42 and won the general 50-40 as SD-21 went from 53-45 Romney to 48-45 Clinton. Republican state Sen. Jim Denning held his seat 53-47 in the general as SD-08 flipped from 57-41 Romney to 47-46 Clinton. Denning, a conservative who ousted a moderate in the 2012 primary, became majority leader after the election.
One Republican holds an Obama/Clinton seat. Republican freshman Barbara Bollier, a Johnson County moderate who did not need to unseat a GOP incumbent in the primary, won her first term 54-46 as SD-07 went from 50-48 Obama all the way to 57-36 Clinton. Meanwhile, four Democrats represent Romney/Trump seats. The Democrat in the reddest seat is Laura Kelly, who held her Topeka-area SD-18 52-48 even as it went from 52-45 Romney to 53-40 Trump.
While Republicans controlled the governorship and both chambers when it was time to redraw the lines, moderate and conservative Republicans could not agree on new maps, and the courts stepped in. The court-drawn maps aren't exactly great for Democrats in what is already a very tough state. 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.
The median seat in the House backed Trump 59-33, a little to the right of his 57-36 statewide win. Interestingly, this seat is held by the Democrat Steven Crum, who beat a GOP incumbent 53-47 last year. The median point in the Senate backed Trump 55-37, a little to the left of his statewide win. Because the Senate has an even number of seats, we average the two middle seats to come up with the median point in the chamber. But unlike in the House, Democrats don't hold any seats that are more conservative than the median point.
And for the record, we did not subject you to a single Wizard of Oz or What's the Matter With Kansas? joke. You're welcome, readers.