Pres-by-LD: Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation comes to Delaware and South Dakota, two small but very different states. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new states; you can also find all our data from 2016 and past cycles here.
We'll start with Delaware. Democrats only took the state House in 2008, but Team Blue now holds a 26-15 majority. The state Senate has been in Democratic hands since the 1970s, but Republicans unexpectedly had a chance to flip the chamber earlier this year. Democrats entered the 2016 election with a 12 to nine majority, but the GOP managed to capture a seat. That same night, Democratic state Sen. Bethany Hall-Long, who was halfway through her four-year term in the Senate, was elected lieutenant governor.
After Hall-Long resigned to assume statewide office, the chamber was deadlocked 10 to 10, and a GOP win in the special election for her seat would have given the Republicans control of the Senate. SD-10, which is located in the Wilmington area, had swung from 59-40 Obama to 54-41 Clinton, so Democrats had good reason to take this race seriously. In the end, Democrats rallied behind Stephanie Hansen, who won 58-41.
Altogether, Clinton's 53-42 win in Delaware allowed her to take 14 of the 21 Senate seats. Even though Obama had won the state by a stronger 59-40 margin four years before, Clinton carried the exact same seats that Obama had carried. Three Republicans sit in Clinton/Obama seats. The bluest GOP-held seat is SD-05 in New Castle County. (Most of the state lives in New Castle, so almost all the seats we'll be talking about are there.) This district swung left, going from 57-41 Obama to 58-37 Clinton, but Republican Catherine Cloutier won her fifth term last year 59-41.
SD-07 was the one seat that the GOP picked up last year, and it swung hard the other way. This seat went from 64-35 Obama to 55-39 Clinton, and Republican Anthony Delcollo unseated Democratic incumbent Patricia Blevins 50.5-49.5. The final Clinton/GOP seat is SD-04. This district went from a thin 50-49 Obama to 54-41 Clinton; GOP state Sen. Gregory Lavelle was last up in 2014, when he won 62-38.
We'll turn to the House, where members serve two-year terms. Clinton carried 27 of the 41 seats, flipping one Romney seat and losing two Obama districts. One Democrat sits in a Trump seat, while three Republicans are on Clinton turf. The Republican in the bluest seat is Michael Ramone in HD-21. This district went from 59-40 Obama to 54-40 Clinton, and Ramone won for the fourth cycle in a row without any Democratic opposition.
The one Romney/Clinton seat is HD-12, which went from 50.0-48.5 Romney to 53-41 Clinton, but where longtime GOP state Rep. Deborah Hudson won without opposition. The one Democrat in a Trump seat is Trey Paradee, who represents part of Kent County in the middle of the state. HD-29 went from 53-46 Obama to 48-47 Trump, but Paradee won 62-36.
After the 2010 GOP wave, Democrats didn't control the redistricting process in many states, but Delaware was one of them. One way we measure how much a map favors, or does not favor, each party is to look at the median seat. In other words, if you sorted every district in a legislative chamber from Hillary Clinton's greatest margin of victory to Trump's biggest edge, the median seat would be the one in the middle (or in chambers with an even number of seats, an average of the middle two).
With the release of Delaware and South Dakota, we've rolled out the 2016 presidential results for each legislative chamber in 43 of the 50 states. We've published a spreadsheet to keep track of each chamber's median seat, and we'll be updating it as we roll out new states.
The Washington Post's Aaron Blake recently published an excellent piece using our median seat chart to demonstrate the obstacles Democrats face in flipping so many chambers under the current GOP drawn maps. For instance, which Trump carried Michigan just 47.6-47.4, he took the median state House seat 52-43. This means that, to win the majority in the Michigan House, Democrats will need to win at least some of the seats that backed Trump by a 9-point margin; not an easy task.
So what about Delaware? Clinton carried the median Senate seat 55-39, about 5 points to the left of her 53-42 statewide win. In the House, Clinton took the median seat 55-40, 3 points to the left of her statewide performance.
We'll move on to South Dakota, which is many ways is the opposite of Delaware. For one thing, the state is heavily Republican: Trump carried it 62-32, a swing to the right from Romney's already strong 58-40 win. The GOP also dominates the state government. While Delaware Democrats have controlled the governorship since the 1992 election, the last time their counterparts in South Dakota won their governor's office was in 1974. The GOP took the state Senate in 1994, and they've held the House for even longer. Team Red now enjoys a 29 to six Senate supermajority, and a 60-10 House edge. All members of both chambers are up for re-election every two years.
South Dakotans each have two state representatives and one senator. In almost every case, the state House and Senate districts are identical to one another. However, in order to give local Native American communities more representation in the House, Senate Districts 26 and 28 are divided in half. HD-26A and HD-28A are both predominantly Native American, while HD-26B and HD-28B are heavily white.
The 2016 presidential results also show how different the two groups vote. Clinton carried HD-26A 62-32, but Trump took HD-26B 66-27; HD-28A backed Clinton 49-46, while Trump carried HD-28B 80-14. The A seats are each represented by Democrats, while the GOP holds the B seats. Trump carried SD-26 54-40 (though Obama won it 52-47), while he won SD-28 67-27; SD-26 is represented by Democrat Troy Heinert, while Republican Ryan Maher holds SD-28.
Altogether, Trump carried 28 of the 30 Senate seats, flipping three Obama districts. Four Democratic senators and six Democratic representatives hold Trump districts, while two House Republicans represent Clinton turf.
The Democrat in the reddest seat in either chamber is Bille Sutton, who holds Trump's third-best seat in the state. SD-21, which is located in the southeastern part of the state, swung from 66-33 Romney to 74-22 Trump, but Sutton won without any opposition. Sutton announced a few months ago that he was giving up his seat to run for governor. Last year, Democratic state Rep. Julie Bartling and GOP state Rep. Lee Qualm were both decisively re-elected here as well.
Just one Trump legislative district has an all-Democratic delegation. LD-01, located in the northeast, went from 52-46 Obama to 57-37 Trump, but the GOP didn't field a candidate for either the Senate or the House. Republicans represent both seats in HD-27, located in the southwest. This district went from 60-39 Obama to 51-44 Clinton, and both Republicans narrowly won even as Democratic state Sen. Kevin Killer was winning re-election here without opposition.
The GOP drew the lines in South Dakota, though the maps don't give them an obvious edge. Trump took the median seat 62-31 (both chambers have the same median seat), almost identical to his 62-32 statewide win.