There's a competition crisis in America's state legislatures
I try not to be that competitive of a person, especially when playing board games or video games that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. I don’t always succeed, but I’ve made the effort to improve because nobody likes sour grapes. When someone totally blows their stack over a trip to jail in Monopoly, a red shell to the face in MarioKart, or (heaven forbid) a robber placed on exactly the resource you need in Settlers of Catan — that’s not a recipe for fun.What's even less fun in games like these is when one person wins by a landslide every single time. They win so much that there may as well not be anyone playing against them.That's because real competition is really, really important. I mean “competition” here in the truest sense of the word: a contest where anybody could win, where the outcome is truly in doubt. In games and in life, competition leads to good things. Competitive football games are more fun to watch; competitive colleges and universities are more gratifying to get into; and competitive economies — actually competitive ones, where more than just a couple big conglomerates own everything — are more efficient and lead to more prosperity.Well, the same is true in politics, and particularly in elections. When two candidates, and more broadly, our two major parties, have to actually battle it out and make a compelling case to voters, we all usually benefit, and real democracy can have a chance to thrive. Because the alternative — elections where one party keeps throwing up Ws without any real pushback — isn’t really a democracy at all. Which makes what’s unfolding in America’s state legislatures so concerning.What’s the problem?In case you don’t recall, state legislatures are the legislative branch of America’s states; essentially, what a governor is to the president, the state legislature is to Congress. They are an important branch of state government, and probably more important than you think. As Congress has fallen into a deep crevasse of gridlock and partisan fighting over the past couple of decades, state governments (via their legislatures) have often been there to pick up the slack on policymaking.Unfortunately, in many states, one party is so weak and demoralized that they can’t even field candidates in enough state legislative districts to even think about posing a real challenge to the other party. This happens sometimes in Congress, where some districts do go uncontested — meaning, either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party can’t find a candidate to even run for the seat as the nominee. As a result, the nominee in the party that did manage to find someone to run essentially wins by default. This happens typically in only a handful of U.S. House seats nationally, around 3% and 4% of all districts nationwide in the last few cycles. Many districts are still won by huge margins, and incumbents nearly always still win re-election; but at least somebody else showed up to play.But in state legislatures, the story is much more grim, and getting worse. Nationwide, between 30% and 50% of all lower-chamber state legislative seats (that is, the state equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives) go completely uncontested by one of the two major parties each election cycle. Even more astounding is the lack of competition in individual states, some of which see far less competition than others. Some states, like Michigan and Minnesota, regularly field candidates for both parties in nearly all their state legislative seats. Massachusetts, on the other hand, is a different story: in their lower legislative chamber, more than half of their races have gone uncontested by one of the two major parties in every election since at least 2010; in the 2024 elections, 4 out of every 5 seats went uncontested. And it’s not just the Democrats: i n Mississippi, out of the 174 seats in their state legislature, only 25 of them — 14% — had actual contests with both parties participating.In practice, this means that for many state legislative chambers each cycle, the party that will control the majority in the next legislative session — a major prerequisite for governing and passing legislation — is literally a foregone conclusion, because one party or the other has fielded candidates for less than half of their legislative seats. In other words, it’s mathematically impossible for that party to win a majority, even if they win every single seat they compete in (which, by the way, they won’t).In the 2022 cycle, for example, simple majorities were guaranteed for either the Democrats or Republicans in 22 chambers across 16 states. In some of these cases, one party was guaranteed a veto-proof majority — meaning, that party could override a governor’s veto if necessary — before a single vote had even been counted in the election. Why is this happening?There are plenty of reasons, including perfectly good reasons, why a seat might go uncontested. One is that, in many cases, it just doesn’t make sense for a person to do. Imagine for a minute that you're a Democrat in rural Idaho. You have a successful business, you've lived in the area for generations, and you have pretty good relationships in your community. On paper, you're fabulous candidate for state legislature. Unfortunately, you live in a district that Donald Trump won in 2024 by 50 percentage points. It's Republicans all the way up and down in your potential electorate. Your great relationships and business acumen could probably help you peel some of those folks away, but not 50%. The same in reverse goes for a well-qualified Republican in the heart of New York City or Minneapolis. Sure, they might be good candidates. But a loss is virtually guaranteed. So why should they waste their time, money, and endless effort on a year-long campaign, only to lose by high double digits?In terms of why so many state legislative districts are uncompetitive to begin with, there are a couple of competing explanations, and some are better than others. Probably the most common explanation is gerrymandering: in which legislatures draw their own seats in order to maximize the advantage for their party. And don’t get me wrong, gerrymandering is bad; but as I’ve written about before, it’s not the top explanation for declining competition.The evidence here doesn’t really align, anyway. Minnesota and Florida still let their state legislatures draw their districts, but both have very few uncontested races each year; meanwhile, Idaho has a fairly robust independent commission, but fell into the over-50% uncontested category back in 2022. This also isn’t a problem of just one party: plenty of red, blue, and swing states have both high and low levels of contestation.There are two more likely explanations that are probably working in tandem. One is the geographic sorting of the two parties over the past 30 or more years. Democrats have diminished as a presence in rural areas, particularly in the South and Midwest, while gaining numbers in large cities like Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago. On the whole, this sorting makes it very difficult to distribute votes in a way that produces competitive districts. After all, you can't make Democrats and Republicans live next to each other. The second explanation is one we've known for a while, which is that amid all the nationalization of our politics that's taken place over the past few decades, state and local party organizations have declined significantly in their influence and stature. This is especially true of state parties that are in the extreme minority in that state: say, Idaho Democrats or Hawaii Republicans. State and local party organizations used to be hubs for potential candidates to run for office and challenge incumbents. But without those organizing forces on the ground with resources to help candidates, even well-qualified folks in those parties don't see much point in taking the plunge. Get full access to You Are Here at youarehere.substack.com/subscribe
