Democrats look to state legislatures as their anti-Trump ‘firewall’

In an otherwise disappointing election year, Democrats’ wins in state legislatures were a bright spot.

By Grace Panetta for The19th

As Democrats prepare for Republicans to take over the White House and Congress, they’re looking to their wins in state legislatures as a bright spot from November’s otherwise-disappointing election results — wins they say will be the basis for their anti-Trump “firewall.”

As President-elect Donald Trump retook the presidency and Republicans flipped control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats managed to hold off a red wave further down the ballot, said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), state legislative Democrats’ campaign arm.

Democrats suffered some defeats, losing control of the Michigan state House and falling short of flipping competitive chambers in Arizona. But they also broke Republican supermajorities in the battleground states of North Carolina and Wisconsin, held onto a narrow majority in the Pennsylvania state House, and defended majorities in blue states where Trump gained significant ground — performing better than expected, given the national results.  

“It wasn’t perfect. But when you think about what happened everywhere else on the ballot, I think that we landed in a place where we are in fighting form coming into the 2026 midterms,” Williams said. “The battlegrounds remain quite familiar, and the Democratic firewall in this space is strong — and in fact, stronger than it was when Trump took office in 2017.”

In 2025, Democrats will hold trifectas in 17 states — meaning they control both legislative chambers and the governor’s office.  They control one chamber and the governorship or both chambers with a Republican governor in four others, meaning an estimated 160 million Americans will live in a state with some degree of Democratic governance. With Republicans controlling Washington, those legislatures will be the ones passing and enacting Democratic policy priorities, potentially including protections for LGBTQ+ people and those seeking abortions.  

The Republican State Leadership Committee, state Republicans’ main campaign arm, is also celebrating its victories in flipping the Michigan House, tying the Minnesota House and expanding its supermajority in New Hampshire. Dee Duncan, the president of the RSLC, said in a post-election memo that the organization defied “an onslaught of spending” from Democrats and a “difficult political climate” to secure its wins. Republicans will go into 2025 holding 23 trifectas.

“Our strategy of investing early in targeted races as well as our commitment to improving the GOP’s standing in absentee and early voting paid dividends as voters made one thing clear: they want Republicans and their policies at the state level,” Duncan wrote. Republicans, he said, “are well-positioned to advance conservative policies in the states that will benefit families for years to come.”

Democrats have been working to rebuild their bench at the state level after debilitating losses in the 2010 and 2014 midterms under former President Barack Obama. They’re set to enter 2025 holding majorities in 39 of 99  chambers and have doubled the number of trifectas they hold since 2017, according to the DLCC.

In a year where the electorate as a whole shifted to the right and Trump gained significant ground in blue states, Democrats’ state-level wins were “really remarkable,” said Lala Wu, co-founder and executive director of Sister District, an organization focused on electing Democrats to state legislatures.

“This wasn’t a 2010 result in state legislatures across the country, which, given the baseline of this year, is unbelievable,” said Simone Leiro, chief communications officer for The States Project, a Democratic group that uses a data-driven approach to invest in state legislative races. State legislative candidates outperforming the top of the ticket, she said, was “unprecedented.”

The outcome in 2024 was the opposite pattern of the 2020 elections when Democrats won a trifecta in Washington but lost ground in state legislatures.

Williams said that this year, the DLCC prioritized defense and incumbent protection over going on offense.

State legislative candidates are the closest to the voters and communities they represent and can tailor messaging and strategy accordingly. Because state legislative races receive far less attention and are less nationalized than the presidential race, Williams noted, many candidates were in persuasion mode, working to convince voters up until Election Day — a strategy that paid off.

At the top of the ticket, Trump won in part by turning out lower-propensity voters, including many who had previously voted for President Joe Biden or hadn’t voted at all. But enough of those Trump voters didn’t vote in down-ballot races that his strength didn’t translate into the same level of wins.

Wu said that messaging around popular issues like reproductive rights also played a role in helping state legislative candidates defy the national headwinds Democrats faced over issues like the economy and immigration. While Trump attempted to moderate his stance on abortion and defuse concerns he would sign a national abortion ban into law, state legislative Democrats could point to unpopular abortion bans and restrictions Republican lawmakers at the state level have passed and signed into law.

“This was part of our theory of the case,” Wu said, “that if we could make the case to people that their state lawmakers are the ones who have so much control over reproductive rights and abortion, these issues that have been such winning issues for Democrats, then you could reduce roll-off down ballot.”

Democratic state lawmakers are also more prepared and ready than they were in 2017 to be “the front lines of defense” against incoming Republican governance at the federal level, Leiro said.

“There’s going to be a real federal regulatory vacuum,” Wu said. “There’s real chaos at the federal level, and states have a real opportunity and really, an obligation to help fill in those gaps and step in to help regulate where the federal government may be stepping back.”

That work is already underway in states like Michigan, where Democrats are scrambling to pass as much legislation as they can before they lose their legislative trifecta. Legislatures in deep-blue states like California and Illinois are also aiming to pass bills to “Trump-proof” their liberal states. Other lawmakers are adopting a wait-and-see approach to Trump’s second term while keeping open minds to areas of potential collaboration with the incoming administration.

Electorally, Democrats are looking to build on their wins in 2025, starting with a trio of January state legislative special elections in Virginia. Governorships and state legislative seats will be up for election in New Jersey and Virginia. In both 2017 and 2021, Virginia’s off-cycle elections were bellwethers that accurately captured changing political trends.    

“We’ve proven if anything in 2024 that state legislative candidates need the seriousness and the investment in order to make their most compelling case to voters,” Leiro said. “In a year without other federal elections on the ballot, that becomes even more critical. In Virginia, we could see the next Democratic trifecta, or we could see a really different story, depending on how serious the investment and the focus is.”

Blue states also made gains in women’s representation, with Nevada and Colorado set to join New Mexico in states where women make up a majority of state lawmakers in 2025, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. Wu and Sister District want to see even more states reach parity in the coming years.

“We can do so, so much more,” Wu said. “And we know that when women are in power, when there are more moms, teachers and nurses that bring diverse perspectives, we can get really incredible policy outcomes.”

For Williams, Democrats’ success at the state level is a silver lining — and a pathway forward for Democrats’ success — for the next four years.

“Half of Americans are governed by a Democratic Party in their states, which means that the scale of our influence at this ballot level is really large,” Williams said. “We’re not going to be able to get the kinds of things done federally that we all hope for, but that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. We have real opportunities to move important policies forward in the states that have a real impact on people’s lives.”