One big change in the Nevada Legislature is that the special masters nested the Assembly seats inside each Senate district, so I go by Senate district and list the two Assembly seats. The Assembly had long been the Democratic stronghold, while the Senate was in Republican hands. Then Democrats won control of the Senate in 2008, and held it in 2010. I know that Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maryland, Alaska, and New Jersey (though no separated Assembly districts there). It will be interesting to see how many of these sets are split. For information on the Senate Districts, read my previous diary on that. I did leave the Senate stats to compare the Assembly seats, since the Assembly District numbers do not easily match up. And as always, with Canadian style riding names for each seat. I have the actual maps on here. If you look closer, you can see how special pains were made to pair as few incumbents together as possible.
You may notice there are an incredible number of freshmen Assemblymen. the 12-year term limit kicked in last year. Nearly half the members are freshmen. Only two Assemblymen are termed out in 2012. Note that there are only four Hispanic districts at or over 50%. The special masters found that the last part of the Gingles test was not met, in that there was not white bloc voting to prevent Hispanics from electing the candidate of their choice. They did create 11 seats with a Hispanic population over 30%. The bottom line is that Democrats have an edge in 25 (20 safe, 3, likely, 2 lean) seats, the GOP in 15 (9 safe, 2 likely, 4 lean), with two tossups. The current breakdown is 26-16 Democrat, down from 28-14. Do any of you think I was too pessimistic about Democratic chances in the northwest part of Las Vegas in Assembly Districts 2, 4, 9, and 13? If so, that changes the breakdown to 25D, 11R, 6 tossup.
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