The candidate filing deadline has now passed for major party candidates in all states (including the ones which held their legislative races in 2023), so I've updated my spreadsheet breaking out the percentage of legislative districts where Democrats are running at least one candidate.
Across all 50 states there's a total of 7,385 legislative districts: 5,412 House/Assembly seats and 1,972 Senate seats.
However, of those, many aren't actually on the November ballot this cycle. This is partly due to Alabama and Maryland not having any legislative elections 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 districts which were already settled in 2023 in LA, NJ, MS & VA, that leaves a total of 6,437 seats actually on the ballot during the 2023-2024 cycle:
- 5,166 State House/Assembly seats
- 1,271 State Senate seats
Of those, there is (or was last year) at least one Democratic candidate running in 5,044 (78.4%) of them:
- 4,053 House/Assembly (78.5%)
- 991 Senate districts (78.0%)
This ranges from as high as 100% in Michigan to as low as a pathetic 22.1% in Wyoming (which only managed to recruit Democrats for 3 of the 15 Senate races up this year and 14 of the 62 House districts).
NOTE: The numbers below may be slightly different by November due to a handful of candidates dropping out or being added under special circumstances. For instance, here in Michigan, the only Democrat running in one state legislative district passed away recently; he'll presumably be replaced by a new candidate by the local Democratic Party before the November ballots are printed.
