Will Kamala Harris Build New Legislative Majorities?

Editor's Note: This article is a part of Governing's Inside Politics newsletter. Sign up here.

Will Kamala Harris Build New Legislative Majorities? In Wisconsin, partisan control of the Assembly is an open question for the first time in more than a decade. Last December, the state Supreme Court ordered a new map, breaking up a solid GOP gerrymander. Democrats still face an uphill climb, says Anthony Chergosky, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse — they’d need a net gain of 16 seats to win the majority — but they have a chance.

There’s another reason for party optimism — namely, the change in presidential candidates. Polls suggest that Vice President Harris has won over most Democrats who were disaffected with President Biden. “Harris has given new life to the down-ballot candidates,” Chergosky says. “It really did seem to me that with Biden at the top of the ticket, their chance to win an Assembly majority was slipping from their grasp.”

This dynamic matters far beyond Wisconsin. This year, there’s a striking amount of overlap in the Venn diagram showing states that matter in the presidential race and those seeing real competition in terms of legislative control. Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all have competitive chambers, along with New Hampshire (which will also be close and has been traditionally volatile at the legislative level) and Minnesota, home state of Tim Walz, the governor and Harris’ running mate.

“It’s a huge help,” says Carolyn Fiddler, who has worked on Democratic legislative campaigns and runs a Substack on state politics. “I can’t express to you the amount of down-ballot relief that washed through me when it was announced that Kamala would be the nominee.”

Presidential performance matters when it comes to legislative contests. A lot. As is true in Congress, fewer than 10 percent of state legislators represent districts that didn’t support their party’s nominee for president the last time around. Increased Democratic enthusiasm for Harris will help in many ways.

If Biden continued to look like a loser, many Democrats would have stayed home. Instead, Harris could be a net-plus in the most competitive states. The Harris campaign announced last week that it has reserved $370 million in advertising for after Labor Day, primarily in swing states. Rallies, turnout efforts and increased enthusiasm in the key states should all put some extra puff in the sails of legislative candidates. “The importance of the coordinated campaign can’t be overstated,” Fiddler says.

All that being said, the Harris effect may be minimal. For one thing, it’s possible her support will peak this week, with the four-day free commercial of the Democratic National Convention and the potential end of her so-called honeymoon. Whether she or Republican Donald Trump ends up winning states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, the margin is likely to be a percentage point or two either way — hardly a guarantee of extended coattails. And Democrats sometimes struggle even when their presidential nominees are doing well, with their supporters much more likely to skip voting when it comes to legislative contests than Republicans.

Still, Harris’ performance has given Democrats greater reason to hope they can chip away at GOP dominance at the state level than they had just a few weeks ago. Even in the small number of states where legislative control is genuinely at stake, majorities are likely to come down to a few seats, some of which will be decided by just a couple hundred votes.
Where Abortion’s on the Ballot: The Supreme Court made abortion a state-by-state issue in 2022, when its Dobbs decision found there is no constitutional right to the procedure. Plenty of states have acted in response, and increasingly it’s the voters who are having the final say.

On Tuesday, Montana became the eighth state to approve an abortion measure for the November ballot. As in most of the other states this year, the Montana initiative would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Also on Tuesday, Arizona’s Supreme Court rejected a challenge that sought to keep an abortion rights amendment off the ballot. Last week, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft certified an abortion initiative, but its backers are now suing him over summary language that will be posted in polling places.

“We know that every time abortion has been on the ballot since Dobbs, it’s won,” says Kimya Forouzan, principal state policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy group that supports abortion rights. “There’s very large support for abortion access.”

It’s certainly true that abortion initiatives have proven popular (about a half-dozen have passed since Dobbs) and that public support for abortion has increased since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Democrats made the issue central to their campaign messaging in 2022 and have kept up the drumbeat this year, including at the party’s convention this week. The backers of abortion rights initiatives have also consistently been able to outspend their opponents.

But these measures go well beyond the question of protecting abortion access, contends Peter Northcutt, director for state strategies for National Right to Life. The constitutional amendments make it practically impossible to impose any sort of limits on abortions — or certainly open up limits to court challenge, he says. “This makes it so the most basic limits to abortion, if they’re challenged, are overturned,” Northcutt says.

In Kansas, where the state Supreme Court found a right to abortion in the state constitution (a decision essentially affirmed by voters in 2022), the court struck down two laws restricting abortion in July. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged Michigan’s requirement for parental consent when minors seek abortion, citing the constitutional provisions approved by voters in 2022. Montana’s Supreme Court struck down a parental consent law last week, citing privacy rights.

One state that won't be voting on abortion is Arkansas. On Thursday, the state supreme court blocked an initiative from appearing on the November ballot, ruling that organizers had made a minor paperwork error in filing signatures that was nevertheless disqualifying.

Assuming some or all of this year’s initiatives are approved, a couple of things will happen. For one, the current patchwork of differing state laws will continue. (Interstate travel for abortion has doubled since Dobbs, according to the Guttmacher Institute.)

The other is that the remaining states that allow citizen initiatives will be home to abortion rights measures in the foreseeable future. “For the next couple of cycles, you’re going to continue to see initiative battles popping up,” Northcutt says. “There have already been initiatives signaled for 2026 in Idaho and elsewhere.”