Democrats Keep Control Of Pennsylvania State House Despite Losing Statewide

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

It's official: Pennsylvania Democrats have successfully defended enough seats in the state house to retain their slim 102-101 majority. This result was seen as a long shot given the fact that Democrats lost statewide on the Presidential level and are currently down in the vote count in the Pennsylvania Senate race.

Coming into this election even, many Pennsylvania Democrats believed that holding the slim majority would prove difficult, and yet, they prevailed nonetheless.

The Pennsylvania Senate remains a Republican majority given the fact that there were not enough competitive seats up for grabs this cycle for Democrats to take advantage of and flip control of the chamber. That is expected to be a top goal for the state party heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

Ensuring a Democratic majority in the state house will provide Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro with the power to usher through legislation that would normally be blocked by Republicans. While the Pennsylvania Senate may still be under Republican control, having the state house under Democratic control will be a boon for Governor Shapiro and state democrats.

https://meidasnews.com/news/democrats-keep-control-of-pennsylvania-state-house-despite-losing-statewide

[Deminpenn]

1. Courtesy of Mark Nordenberg and Kim Ward

PA state redistricting is done by a legislative committee, 2 R, 2 D and 1 neutral outside appointee. This last cycle former Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg was the non-partisan member. I suspected he'd side with the Dem map, which would actually be drawn in accordance with out state constitution making compact and contiguous districts. That's what happened. The surprise was state senate R leader Kim Ward also voting for map because it didn''t really change the state senate districts which favors Rs. The state house Rs were really mad about losing their heavily gerry-mandered majority, but the map approval vote was 4-1 fot the Dems map.

The new map shifted a lot of state house districts from R western PA to D SE/eastern PA because western PA is losing population whereas eastern PA is growing. There were only a couple competitive seats this year, so it's unlikely Dems would have more than a couple seat majority while this map is in effect.

As for the state row offices, Dems had 2 lackluster candidates. There were 6 or 8 Dems running in the primary that would've been stronger candidates, but DePasquale won because of his western PA roots/votes. He was the state aud genl, but ran in for congress in 2022 in PA10 and lost. Erin McClelland, another western PA Dem, who ran for treasurer has run several times for office outside her community and lost every time. Kenyatta was a good candidate for aud genl, but as a gay, AfAm man from Philadelphia, started with those strikes against him.