New York state Senate
Using the 2012 presidential election results according to state legislative districts calculated by Daily Kos Elections, we've put together interactive district maps of those results along with the most recent legislative results and basic information about each lawmaker. Each chamber has a separate link for both 2012 and 2014 in this permanent post, which you can also find on the Daily Kos Elections sidebar.
For each map, districts in solid blue were carried by Obama and are represented by a Democrat, while those in solid red were won by Mitt Romney and are held by a Republican. Lighter red districts voted for Obama and a Republican legislator, while those in lighter blue went for Romney and a Democratic legislator. Because some states have multi-member districts, those electing a split delegation but voting for Obama are the lightest red while split delegations in Romney districts are the lightest blue.
Independent-held districts are colored green. Several Democrats in multiple states who caucus with Republicans are colored yellow. (No Republicans anywhere caucus with Democrats.) All vacant seats are assigned to the party that last won them. (Note that a few chambers require two separate maps to visualize, explained in the "Notes" section at the bottom of this post.) Let's look at a couple of the most interesting chambers.
The New York State Senate (displayed at the top of this post) is arguably the worst Republican-gerrymandered chamber in the entire country, with Republicans holding a bare majority of 32 of 63 seats in a state Obama carried by 28 points. Making matters worse, six nominal Democrats whose districts are in yellow support the Republicans, giving the ruling coalition an overall majority of 38 seats. The mainstream Democratics hold just 24 seats, while one indicted Democrat is not part of any caucus.
What makes this so galling for Democrats is that Obama carried 55 of 63 districts—Romney only carried eight. However, Republicans hold 25 of these Obama seats. The lone Democrat in a Romney district (Simcha Felder) outright caucuses with the Republicans while the five turncoat "Independent" Democrats hold Obama seats. To further illustrate how effective this gerrymander is for the GOP, the median Senate seat only went for Obama by a 56 to 43 spread, or 12 points with rounding. That's a remarkable 16 points narrower than the president's statewide margin.
Head below the fold to learn about another interesting chamber out west.
Nevada state Assembly
Republicans won a majority in the Nevada state Assembly in a massive upset in 2014 thanks to abysmal Democratic turnout, giving them control of the so-called "trifecta" for the first time since 1928. (Republians also picked up the state Senate and easily held the governorship.) While the state appears as a sea of red, if you zoom in you'll see that Democrats hold 17 districts in the Las Vegas and Reno areas while Republicans hold the other 25.
Obama won 26 districts to Romney's 16, and the GOP majority is built on nine seats won by the president, some of which voted for him by 20 points or more. However, because a court drew this map rather than Republicans, the situation here is the opposite of New York's. The median two seats went for Obama by an average of 54 to 44, which is four percent wider than his 7-point statewide margin with rounding. That leaves Democrats well-positioned to regain the chamber in 2016, when voter turnout will almost certainly improve.