Talk:Political party strength in U.S. states

Disputed Neutrality

I would like to dispute the neutrality of this article. given the following:

           "However, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Republicans slowly increased their
           strength in the          state legislatures, especially in the South, where the increasingly
           conservative Republican party took the place of the Democrats, who had been tainted
           by their party's support for the Civil Rights Movement starting in the 1940s. In the
           1990s, the Republicans finally overtook the Democrats in holding majorities in
           statehouses and governorships."

I would also like to see more sources and data to back up such a claim.

Take a look at the Solid South page. It essentially says exactly this. What exactly are you disputing? That the shift from Democratic dominance to Republican majorities happened? Or that the Democractic support for civil rights was the principal cause? Either way, there's not much to dispute. Acsenray 19:06, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that 'tainted' is an incredibly prejudicial term to use. From my point of view the Democratic Party did what was right and necessary, but took political damage in the south as a result. I think there was a quotation from Lyndon Johnson to the effect that he knew that signing the Civil Rights Act would destroy the Democratic Party in the south. Anyway let me try to express the ideas in the paragraph with neutral POV.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, the Republican Party slowly increased its strength in the state legislatures, especially in the South. From the 1960s the Republican Party pursued a Southern Strategy, designed to exploit the weakening of the former regional dominance of the Democratic Party. Due to increasing Democratic Party support for the Civil Rights Movement starting in the 1940s, conservative Republicans appealed to like minded southerners and this gradually reversed the former party alignment in the region. In the 1990s, the Republicans overtook the Democrats in holding majorities in statehouses and governorships."

Is my draft acceptable? --Gary J 20:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Nebraska's nonpartisan status

While the Nebraska legislature is formally "nonpartisan", nearly all its members are either Democrats or Republicans and the parties endorse candidates for the legislature. For the purposes of party strength, I believe it is important to include these numbers. I propose to revert to the previous version of the table. Acsenray 17:08, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The benefit of using a nominal standard (i.e., going by what they call themselves instead of making a judgement call as to what you/I/someone else thinks they actually are) is that it lends a finality and objectivity to the stats. If we decide to count members of a nonpartisan legislature as partisans, then someone could argue that since state Sen. So-and-So is a Zell Miller-like Democrat who always votes with Republicans, we should count him as a Republican on the chart. Having abandoned the nominal standard, it would be hard to argue against this logic.

Secondly, a nonpartisan legislature is part of Nebraska's constitution. It's a real part of the law, with real effects on government. There are Democrats who have held committee chairmanships, which wouldn't have happened if Nebraska's legislature were partisan. Someone consulting the chart would come away misinformed, which is a bad standard.

Suggested compromise: Revert the stats to reflect nonpartisan status, but leave in the disclaimer above. Schmeitgeist 16:13, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid I still disagree. This is an article on political party strength. In this context, it doesn't make sense to pretend that the individuals don't belong to a particular party. And it's not a matter of giving someone an arbitrary label or refusing to call them what they call themselves. These people are members of a party and they are endorsed by a party. They are nominally members of a party; I'm not pasting that label on them arbitrarily. When they run for other state and local offices, they keep their party labels; when they run for federal offices, they keep their party labels. Why pretend that this is not happening? The fact that the legislature works in a different way than other legislatures is interesting but more appropriate for a discussion of the Nebraska legislature itself, not in an article on political party strength.

The Nebraska Republican Party's Web site [1] claims the following senators as Republicans -- Aguilar, Baker, Brashear, Bromm, Burling, Byars, Combs, Cudaback, Cunningham, Erdman, Foley, Friend, Hudkins, Jensen, Johnson, Jones, Kremer, Louden, Maxwell, McDonald, Mines, Mossey, Pedersen, Pederson, Price, Quandahl, Redfield, Schrock, Smith, Stuhr, Stuthman, Tyson Vrtiska, and Wehrbein. A telephone call to the Nebraska Democratic Party and they claim the following districts' senators as members of their party -- 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 27th, 28th, 45th, and 46th. Are they violating the Nebraska constitution by doing so? The fact is that these officials are members of a party and I don't see how removing the numbers from the table makes readers more informed.

Why should someone be misinformed? Since the beginning, the introductory material to the table has included the statement that the Nebraska legislature is official nonpartisan. This table says nothing about constitutional structure, committee organization, or leadership. It simply gives the raw numbers of elected officials by party. Why hide this information? (I'd even be willing to note "nonpartisan" in the table itself so long as the breakdown is still there.) Just presenting the raw numbers doesn't imply anything incorrect about the structure of Nebraska government. By linking to the appropriate article on the legislature, it should suffice to inform. Acsenray 19:55, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I updated things

I updated the maps and the seat totals at the top and bottom of the page-- the big table in the middle was accurate, so I didn't touch it. :)

There is still some trouble with those numbers though. I used the information I got off of this site, but it had 10+ seats undecided, and other news articles I've found have differing numbers.

Plus, I'm not getting the fair-use qualification thing for the images I uploaded. All I did was copy the old images onto my computer and recolor the states accordingly, if that helps any.

Any input on this would be great, thanks. JMurphy 21:30, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

The Numbers

What do the numbers in the Current Party Strength table mean? Boreanesia 09:22, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

The table fields read: [Majority Party] (# seats held) - (# seats held by the Minority Party)

The 3rd number (when present) represents independent/3rd party candidates (currently only 16 of 7382 seats). The 4th number lists vacancies.

Example: Minnesota's Upper House Majority reads "Democrats 36-29-1-1". This means that the majority Democrats currently hold 36 seats while the Republicans hold 29 seats. There is also 1 independent seat and 1 seat is vacant.

Updated Again

I updated the big table in the middle with information from the [www.ncsl.org National Council of State Legislatures]. However, it contradicts itself-- here[2] it says that the Dems lead in seat totals by 5, but on the numbers table here[3] it adds up to 10. Since I updated the table in the middle with the numbers off the second page, those numbers also add up to ten. Also changed part of the last paragraph of the intro, and added the superscripted "a" to indicate vacant seats. --JMurphy 18:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Put correct info on the maps. --JMurphy 19:40, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Mississippi Senate

I'm having trouble confirming the current make up of the Mississippi State Senate. I've found sources saying its 26-26 with a Republican tie breaker, but only found 25 Senators listed as Republican on the official site. Any verifiable data would be helpful. 22:50, 17 January 2007 --goodleh

A Democrat switched over, didn't he? Juppiter 18:48, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Party membership totals?

I would like to see a table with the number of registered voters in each party. How many millions are registered Republican, Democratic, etc.? Just a suggestion. Griot 21:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge proposal

This article and Political party strength in the United States have both been tagged with a merge template since January 2007, yet no discussion of this exists. The two articles are essentially about the same subject matter and in fact are nearly identical. Why not merge? Hult041956 19:27, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

"Current" Party Strength not Current

From 110th United States Congress#Members, it says that there are currently 6 vacancies in the House of Representatives, none of which are represented here. --Spoon! (talk) 01:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Graph

Problematic Please see here for why I changed the graph. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:06, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Change to Table?

I would propose getting rid of the Class 1, 2, 3 Senator columns and replacing it with "Senior Senator" and "Junior Senator" columns. This would be more concise and informative. 63.107.91.99 (talk) 22:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I've thought that same thing before. All the empty cells make it kind of hard to read. I'd support this change. Qqqqqq (talk) 23:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Are there any objections to this proposed change? Qqqqqq (talk) 22:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Not from me. I agree it doesn't matter which class a senator is for the sake of this page.--Muboshgu (talk) 16:11, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Alright. I'll make this change soon. Qqqqqq (talk) 16:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Number of Registered Democrats and Republicans

The article says the Democrats had 72 million registered voters and the Republicans had 55 million Republicans and cites a 2004 column by Al Neuharth, which was not even a news article. He might have been correct, but he didn't cite a source. In contrast, a 2008 AP story says "Nationwide, there are about 42 million registered Democrats and about 31 million Republicans, according to statistics compiled by The Associated Press." See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/06/politics/main4422449.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4422449 Is there a more definitive source for the number of registered Democrats and Republicans than the Al Neuharth column? Kaltenmeyer (talk) 04:26, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Confusion about Chart

The article says

the following 22 states (mostly in the South and the Midwest) do not provide for party preferences in voter registration: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

and then it says

The partisan breakdown "demographics" provided in the following table are obtained from that state's party registration figures (from late 2010 whenever possible) where indicated.

I am confused. If 22 states do not provide for party preferences in voter registration, then where did the figures for party registration for those 22 states come from? Kaltenmeyer (talk) 04:46, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

See superscript notation "g", noted below the chart. Rostz (talk) 04:49, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused, too. The "g" explains where stats for the states that provide the preference option upon voting come from, but what about the other states?--Mike74 (talk) 21:43, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

They come from Political Machine 2008 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daniel the duck (talk • contribs) 23:38, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe the figures for the 22 states that don't have registration-by-party are from 2008 exit poll data. I've been meaning to try to track those figures down and source them, but haven't gotten to it yet. IJBall (talk) 16:07, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

2004 chart removal

I removed the 2004 chart; it's out of date, incorrectly labeled, and poorly sourced; see Talk:Democratic_Party_(United_States)#Number_of_Registered_Democrats for related discussion. Rostz (talk) 05:19, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

It would be good if someone could get those figures for 2010 and recreate a more up-to-date version of that chart - the original was useful in that respect. IJBall (talk) 16:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

See the discussion referenced above - in short, the entire notion of that chart is bogus because nearly half the states don't register voters by party. I've added text for the closest thing possible, national polling data that reflects self-reported party identification (but yes, a chart version would be nice - there are tools listed here.) Rostz (talk) 16:31, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

So, is everyone OK with using Gallup's numbers? This could get tricky, depending on which polling outfit you want to use for the party self-identification numbers. (I'll see if I can figure out Wiki's chart function - but I'm pretty busy these days, and may not get to it anytime soon...) Anyway, thanks for that. - IJBall (talk) 16:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Party Identification By State (Gallup)

Gallup is out with new Party ID by state numbers, here:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/152438/States-Move-GOP-2011.aspx#3

Would anyone object to me going through the "Current Party Strength" table and applying these new numbers to the "Demographics" column for those states that don't have Party ID by voter registration stats (esp. if I reference the Gallup article)?

If we start using these Gallup numbers, at least we will have a consistent source for the party breakdown numbers for the non-Party-ID-by-voter-registration states - and Gallup posts these numbers yearly.

Anyway, if anyone has an objection or a concern, let me know. Because, if not, I think I'll put these figures in to the table in the next few days... - IJBall (talk) 18:35, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Update: And almost three years later... Anyway, this has now been  Done. I used the 2013 Gallup figures from here. I actually wanted to use the figures from 2014, and I still intend to use the 2014 figures, but they probably won't be publicly available from Gallup for another month or two. When those figures are released, I'll switch to the 2014 Gallup figs in the table. --IJBall (talk) 07:44, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

2015 numbers are available, so the 2014 numbers should be updated. However, I do find using the Gallup poll numbers for the non-Party-ID-by-voter-registration states to be somewhat problematic. We have 2 different measurements used in this column, Gallup polls for 22 states, and voter registration data for 28 states. Looking at the Gallup numbers for the 28 states that have party registration, the discrepancy between Gallup numbers and registration numbers for any given state is very great. So trying to gauge voter demographics between states using these 2 measures cannot really give us an accurate picture. The number of Independent/Unaffiliated voters ends up being generally much greater in Party-ID-by-voter-registration states than in those that do not. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if there is a good solution to provide consistency and accuracy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.197.158.190 (talk) 05:12, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Add Cook PVI column to the matrix?

I think that a column with the Cook PVI numbers for each state should be added to the matrix.

The present right-hand-side most column, partisan registration, is good and should remain on the matrix. But adding a column with Cook PVI numbers would be more informative.

72.82.161.16 (talk) 01:00, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

The potential problem would be "column squishing" if another column is added... However, this article seems to contain no links to the Cook PVI page, which it probably should. --IJBall (talk) 01:31, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Changing Definitions of Political Parties and Meaningless tabulation of their strength of years

Given Southerners were always conservative & utterly opposed most civil rights and voting rights, which party they associated with in given decades. The south opposed the party of Lincoln as too liberal, and sided with the Democratic Party from 1865 on. The immigration waves for the next 100 years were similarly poor, conservative, agricultural, and opposed to northern Republicans, so joined the Democratic Party. The northern Dems grew urban, industrialized, affluent, and grew to strongly support civil rights, utterly rejecting the hateful racism with the force of law of Southern US conservative.

The 1964 civil rights act and 1965 voting rights act caused the Southern conservatives to reject the Democratic Party, and Republican Party Presidential candidate Nixon, in 1968, and 1972, converted the South's conservatives into Republicans.

To solve this with a full set of historical is probably best, showing which states voted which way, is probably best, but we need text summaries as well.

For text grids, we need to define the US South, and how many of the region belonged to which political party, so we may see which party, Democrats or Repulbicans, are considered more liberal and more conservative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.28.236.69 (talk) 03:14, October 23, 2015‎ (UTC)

This entire article is misleading, poorly-edited, and wrong-headed

The politics of the Republican party and it's general posture has changed massively even since the days of Reagan, let alone since 1938. A similar argument could probably be made for the Democratic party as well. In addition, for the stated title of the article, there's too little information about numbers of actual people in each state who identify with each party and a huge amount about state representatives/governors/senators. The graphic in the Demographics section has an incomplete legend (what units are we measuring?). The section titled, 'Elections and voter registrations', indicates that 'the following table [provides information from state's] party [voter] registration figures', which doesn't seem to be true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.121.18.194 (talk) 20:15, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Of course it does – it's all clearly 'noted'. The states that have by-party registration have those figures provided; the other states have figures provided from Gallup polling. It's all there in the text. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:12, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Political party strength in U.S. states. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141126165602/https://vr.sos.ky.gov/stats/voterstatscounty.pdf to https://vr.sos.ky.gov/stats/voterstatscounty.pdf
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141218050402/http://www.elections.ny.gov/EnrollmentCounty.html to http://www.elections.ny.gov/EnrollmentCounty.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 08:17, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Governors map needs updating.

Jim Justice, the WV gov just became a Republican. LiberatorLX (talk) 20:41, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Need confirmation on that – so far it looks like just rumors... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:16, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/us/politics/west-virginia-governor-to-switch-from-democrat-to-republican-trump.html LiberatorLX (talk) 05:47, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Kansas should be split control due to their election of Democrat Laura Kelly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.183.49.105 (talk) 15:06, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Needs more sources

The history section needs more sources and the elections section is completely unsourced. I have tagged both accordingly. SunCrow (talk) 14:43, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Per IJBall's correction, the elections section does contain one source. SunCrow (talk) 21:04, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Party control of state Legislatures and Governorships Map Wrong

It shows Kansas with a Republican trifecta. Kansas has a Democratic governor. Map needs updated to show Kansas as yellow.