The candidate filing deadline has passed for major party candidates in 46 states (including the 4 which held their legislative races in 2023), so it seems like a good point to take an updated look at where things stand.
Across these 46 states there's a total of 6,625 legislative districts: 4,776 House/Assembly seats and 1,849 Senate seats.
However, of those, only 5,709 are actually on the November ballot (or were last November). This is partly due to Alabama and Maryland not having theirs until 2026, but it's mostly because many states stagger their Senate terms every two years (similar to the U.S. Senate staggering theirs in thirds).
When you include the 578 which were already settled last year in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey & Virginia, that leaves a total of 5,709 seats actually on the ballot during the 2023-2024 cycle:
- 4,530 State House/Assembly seats
- 1,179 State Senate seats
Of those, there is (or was last year) at least one Democratic candidate running in 4,366 (76.5%) of them:
- 3,462 House/Assembly (76.4%)
- 904 Senate districts (76.7%)
This ranges from as high as 100% in Michigan to as low as a pathetic 20.8% in Wyoming (which only managed to recruit Democrats for 3 of the 15 Senate races up this year and 13 of the 62 House districts).
I'll revisit this one more time after the filing deadlines have passed for the remaining four states (Florida & New Hampshire's deadline is Friday the 14th; Rhode Island's is June 26th, and Delaware's is July 9th. Louisiana has their filing deadline on July 19th, but that's for federal races only).
UPDATE 6/16/24: I've added FLORIDA as well as the NEW HAMPSHIRE SENATE (figuring out the NH House will take awhile due to their confusing House district map/setup, as well as the fact that it has 400 members!). Florida is the 2nd state where Democrats are fielding a candidate in 100% of legislative races up this November.
With the addition of 1.5 more states, the national percentage has been bumped up slightly higher to 77.1%.
This just leaves Rhode Island & Delaware, along with sorting out the New Hampshire House.
