Over the past two years, Republicans have used their dominant hold on most state legislatures to advance a polarizing agenda moving social policy sharply to the right on issues from abortion and voting to book bans and classroom teaching of race and gender.
Now, a new analysis has found that over the next decade, Democrats will face an uphill challenge to dislodge the GOP state house advantage that has allowed conservatives to advance this agenda so broadly and so quickly. In the battle for control of state legislatures, “Democrats face a defensive outlook over the decade ahead,” the Democratic group Forward Majority concludes in a report released Monday. “Good years for Democrats are ones in which power will come down to razor-thin margins; in contrast, good years for Republicans will be total routs.”
The study is based on an exhaustive effort by the group to model how the electoral competition between the two parties will evolve through 2030.