Dems Pick up Five State Legislative Chambers; GOP Picks up Four

Democrats took control of five legislative chambers in Tuesday's elections: Delaware House, Nevada Senate, New York Senate, Ohio House, and Wisconsin Assembly. The Republicans picked up control of four chambers: Montana Senate, Oklahoma Senate, and both the House and Senate of Tennessee. Two houses, the Alaska Senate and the Montana House, are now tied, according to information compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) and published reports.
 
Starting in 2009, Democrats will control both chambers in 27 legislatures, Republicans will control both in 14 states, and the chambers will be split in eight states. Nebraska has a unicameral legislature and does not figure into this calculation.
 
Of those eight split states, five of them - Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania - will have their Senate controlled by the Republicans and their House controlled by the Democrats. One state, Virginia, will be split with a Democrat Senate and a Republican House. The remaining two, Alaska and Montana, will have one of their chambers tied.
 
Including the results from the recent gubernatorial elections, Democrats now control the executive and legislative branch in 17 states (Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin). Republicans retain control of both the executive and legislative branches in eight states (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah).
 
NCSL reports that the Senate of New Hampshire is the first legislative chamber in the U.S. to have a majority of women members, as 13 of the 24 seats are now held by women.
 
Additional state by state elections results by the NCSL, which compare seats in each chamber of each state both pre-election and post-election 2008, can be found at: http://www.ncsl.org/statevote/StateVote2008.htm#