With Congress on the line, Democrats hope for a state legislative blue wave

There's no tiptoeing around it: when it comes to state legislative elections, Democrats are absolute losers.

Twenty years ago, Democrats dominated statehouses from Tennessee to Oregon and Maine to New Mexico. The party boasted around 4,000 state legislators from coast to coast, compared to just over 3,300 for its Republican rivals. But in 2010, President Obama's first midterm cycle, that changed fast. Democrats got "shellacked," losing around 700 seats and watching more than 20 chambers flip from blue to red. Since then, the party has seemingly sat back and watched far-right state legislators hijack state politics and push their agendas, with far-reaching results.

Realizing the mess they're in, some national Democrats have started to pay more attention to state legislatures in recent years, but they're nowhere close to closing the gap: Republicans still control far more chambers, 57 to the Democrats' 39. Most importantly, the GOP has wielded that advantage shamelessly and aggressively in the high-profile fights over gerrymandering and congressional redistricting that have played out over the past year. Without a shift in who controls these statehouses, they'll soon be able to redraw even more congressional maps in their favor, locking more Democrats out of power at both the state and federal levels.

"The far-right capture of the Supreme Court has pushed a lot of the ideological battles we care about down to the states. Whether it's abortion, LGBTQ issues, or voting rights, it's all getting pushed back down to the statehouses,” says Brian Derrick, a Democratic strategist, content creator, and founder of fundraising platform Oath. “Republicans have been investing there for 40 years. We haven't. That's why we have abortion bans and trans healthcare bans and all these terrible voting laws: because we don't have power there."

Facing the very real prospect of a redistricting armageddon, some Democratic groups are preparing to spend record sums and launch creative grassroots campaigns to improve their party's odds in this year's midterms.

Forward Majority, a liberal outside group that focuses on state legislative races, plans to spend upwards of $30 million targeting districts in a half dozen states that will have an outsized impact on congressional redistricting. Using what they call a “Tipping-Point” model, the group predicts the competitiveness of different state chambers for the rest of the decade, through the 2030 elections. They’ve found that by flipping just eight legislative seats this fall, they could impact redistricting for as many six U.S. House seats next year. They’ll attempt to do so mostly through paid media, including digital advertising on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. 

“The ball game is this year. People are starting to get that the path to a majority, the path to 270 [electoral votes] really depends on what happens in the states,” says Leslie Martes, the organization’s CEO. 

Forward Majority isn’t alone—a bunch of other outside spenders plan to cumulatively spend tens of millions on these races too. The party's official arm, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), has rolled out what its president Heather Williams calls a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity and the largest target map and budget in the committee's history, starting with $50 million across 42 chambers. The States Project, a major outside group founded by Daniel Squadron and Adam Pritzker, poured tens of millions into statehouse races in 2024 and then spent heavily in Virginia's 2025 sweep, dropping about $5 million. It also has big plans for 2026. 

Other organizations, like States Win (formerly Sister District) and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee also plan to play a role. Notably, House Majority PAC, Democrats’ primary independent expenditure operation for U.S. House races, has promised to get involved in supporting state legislative campaigns this cycle, because of their impact on future congressional maps.

“State houses are where the most important battles of our time are being fought, and this is exactly where grassroots energy must be deployed,” Daniel Squadron, founder of the States Project, recently wrote. “Our rights, our livelihoods, and our elections are won and lost in state capitols, not the halls of Congress.”

The pitch for investment down-ballot is also a value play, and Republicans seem to agree. In its online fundraising pitch, the States Project notes that a competitive legislative race “costs less than 3% of a competitive U.S. Senate race.” "Investing in state legislative races is now one of the most important and cost-efficient political investments conservatives can make," Republican State Leadership Committee spokesperson Mason Di Palma told NBC News. 

Major independent expenditures aren't the only ones pushing the party toward these races. Some groups are trying to steer grassroots donors away from unwinnable or flashy federal races and toward the state legislative districts that actually matter. One of them is the Democratic fundraising platform Oath, which has partnered with a new social media creator coalition called Y'all Vote to direct resources into state legislative races across the South. In just a few weeks, the coalition raised more than $100,000 in grassroots donations to candidates by having Southern creators talk to their audiences about why these campaigns matter. In its first week alone, it sent over $50,000 directly to candidates and signed up more than 400 social media creators to spread the word.

"It's about fighting everywhere and making it clear there's a political price to pay in every state for gerrymandering. We're targeting these super-underfunded seats where a small amount of money can do a huge amount of good," says Derrick.

The wind may be at the Democratic Party’s back. Over the past year, Democrats have flipped roughly 30 state legislative seats from red to blue in special and off-year elections while Republicans have flipped exactly zero. And across contested special elections, Democratic candidates are running about 10 to 11 points ahead of Kamala Harris's 2024 margins. But whether all this adds up to a downballot "blue wave" in November is an open question. The 2018 cycle—Trump’s first midterm—provides a good benchmark for where this could be headed. Early that year, Democratic candidates were similarly overperforming by double digits in specials, and in the end, they netted just over 300 legislative seats in November. 

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