Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill once famously said, “All politics is local.” But while that may have been true during the 1970s and 80s, when he served, it’s dead wrong now.
In today’s hyperpolarized America, local politics are intensely nationalized, mostly functioning as minor-key variations of whatever is happening in Washington. This year, that will spell bad news for Republican state lawmakers — and, that, in turn, will add to the GOP’s problems at the national level too.
If those trends hold in November, Democrats will have a “blue wave” in state races comparable to the 2018 midterms in Trump’s first term.
Already, since the 2024 election, Democrats have flipped 30 statehouse seats that were held by Republicans, according to a tally by The New York Times. One of the most recent flips was in President Donal Trump’s own backyard in Florida. Not one seat has flipped to the GOP. According to Ballotpedia, Democratic state candidates this year are also outperforming their party’s vote total from the last election by an average of 9 percentage points.
If those trends hold in November, Democrats will have a “blue wave” in state races comparable to the 2018 midterms in Trump’s first term, gaining control of statehouses from Arizona to New Hampshire. Republicans would lose their supermajorities in North Carolina and Kansas — and lose the ability to override the vetoes of those states’ Democratic governors.
At a policy level, this would mean a shift away from the Trump agenda: more bills to expand Medicaid and fewer bills to add work requirements; more bills to protect abortion providers from out-of-state investigations and fewer bills to restrict abortion pills; more bills to codify voting rights and fewer bills to require voter ID.
And it would also put up more roadblocks to Trump’s actions. More Democratic-controlled statehouses would mean local police would not work as closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on its sweeping deportations, elections officials would not share information on registered voters with the Trump administration and state attorneys general would have more resources to push back against the Trump administration in court.
It would also deepen the Democratic bench. State legislatures are the farm teams for Congress — nearly half of current U.S. representatives and senators are former state lawmakers. The last blue wave in 2018 also boosted the share of women in state legislatures from 25.4% to 28.9%, as part of another record-setting “Year of the Woman” election comparable to 1992.
These state-level races will affect the daily lives of Americans around the country — and Trump’s presidency too.
Finally, a blue wave would put Democrats in a stronger position when they redraw congressional maps after the 2030 Census. That was one reason the Republican statehouse wins during former President Barack Obama’s 2010 midterms were so devastating to Democrats in the long run. The gerrymandered maps Republicans drew were so effective that even though Democratic candidates for Congress in 2012 collectively received 1.4 million more votes than Republican candidates, the GOP won control of the House by a 33-seat margin.
Democrats also appear likely to make major gains in Congress, which could lead to more showdowns with the president, such as the current fight over funding ICE and maybe even a third impeachment.
The day after the election, the focus will be on the changes in Washington and what they mean for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Changes in party control of statehouses tend to get short shrift amid all the high-stakes races called during the midterms. But these state races will affect the daily lives of Americans around the country — and Trump’s presidency too.
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Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline.