2025 United States state legislative elections

← 2024 November 4, 2025 2026 →
2 legislative chambers 2 states
Majority party Minority party Third party   Party Republican Democratic Coalition Chambers before 57[a] 39[a] 2[b] Chambers after 57 39 2 Overall change
Map of upper house elections:      Special elections held or to be held      No regularly-scheduled elections
Map of lower house elections:      Democratic hold      Special elections held or to be held      No regularly-scheduled elections

The2025 United States state legislative elections were held on November 4, 2025, for two state legislative chambers in two states. Across thefifty states, 3 percent of alllower house seats were up for election, with noupper house having regularly scheduled elections. These elections take place concurrently with several otherstate and local elections, including the2025 gubernatorial elections.

Democrats expanded their majorities in theVirginia House of Delegates and theNew Jersey General Assembly, gaining a supermajority in the latter, in the November general election. They also flipped seven legislative seats across the country inspecial elections throughout the year while generally outperforming districts' partisan lean in other races. Several other special elections determined partisan control of legislative chambers, though each party held their respective seats in these, resulting in no change of control. This is the first time that no state legislative chamber has changed partisan control since2015.

The 2025 state legislative elections were the first held during thesecond presidency ofDonald Trump following his victory in the2024 presidential election. Republicans had seen very modestcoattails in the2024 legislative elections, flipping a net of just over 50 seats from the Democrats and breaking Democratictrifectas in two states, but establishing no new trifectas of their own. Entering 2025, Republicans fully controlled 23 state governments, Democrats controlled 15, while 12 states were under split control. Only two states held regularly-scheduled legislative elections in 2025:New Jersey, which Democrats fully controlled, andVirginia, where Democrats controlled thelegislature but not thegovernorship.^[2]

Seven incumbent state legislatorsswitched political parties during 2025, four leaving theDemocratic Party and three leaving theRepublican Party. In March,Daniel Thatcher, a moderate RepublicanUtah Senator left the party and joined theUtah Forward Party.^[3]Florida Senate Democratic leaderJason Pizzo announced he was leaving the Democratic Party to become anIndependent in April 2025, citing the party's recent decline in power the state.^[4] He later announced an Independent run forgovernor of Florida.^[5] In May,Robin L. Webb, the last remaining rural Democratic member of theKentucky Senate, left the party and joined the Republicansupermajority.^[6] In June, Maine state senatorRick Bennett left the Republican Party and became an Independent, while simultaneously announcing a bid for governor of the state.^[7] In August, Maine state representativeW. Edward Crockett left the Democratic Party and became an Independent for the same reason.^[8] In September, Republican Oregon State RepresentativeCyrus Javadi switched political parties and joined the Democraticsupermajority.^[9] Later in September, South Dakota State RepresentativePeri Pourier left theDemocratic Party and joined theRepublican Party.^[10]

Affordability emerged as the defining issue of all the 2025 elections, beyond the state legislative level. While this worked in Republicans' favor in2024, when Democrats held power, voters shifted their blame towards Republicans as the issue persisted amidDonald Trump's second term in office.^[12] Democrats particularly homed in on the cost of electricity amid rate hikes tied to the construction ofartificial intelligencedata centers.^[13][14] The election also took place during the2025 government shutdown, caused by disagreements over federal healthcare subsidies, which particularly affected Virginia.^[15]

Regularly scheduled elections are to be held in two of the 99 state legislative chambers in the United States. Nationwide, regularly scheduled elections are to be held for 180 of the 7,383 legislative seats. This table only covers regularly scheduled elections; additional special elections will take place concurrently with these regularly scheduled elections.

Several sites and individuals publish predictions of competitive chambers. These predictions look at factors such as the strength of the party, the strength of the candidates, and the partisan leanings of the state (reflected in part by the state'sCook Partisan Voting Index rating). The predictions assign ratings to each chambers, with the rating indicating the predicted advantage that a party has in winning that election.

Most election predictors use:

• "Tossup": No advantage
• "Tilt": Advantage that is not quite as strong as "lean"
• "Lean": Slight advantage
• "Likely": Significant, but surmountable, advantage
• "Safe" or "Solid": Near-certain chance of victory

Democrats performed extremely well in the off-year elections, flipping 25 Republican-held legislative seats out of the 118 that were up, while losing none of their own. They gained 18 across the regularly-scheduled elections in Virginia and New Jersey and an additional 7 throughspecial elections. These gains came amidelectoral victories across the country, bothat the statewide level andat the local level, for the Democratic Party. In contested special elections, Democrats performed 13percentage points better on average than they did in the2024 presidential election. No state legislative chambers changed partisan control, but Democrats gained asupermajority in theNew Jersey General Assembly while breaking Republican supermajorities in theMississippi Senate andIowa Senate.^[18]

Multiple sources have compared the results to those from the2017 elections, where Democrats made gains in both regular and special elections as a precursor to theblue wave2018 election.^[18][19] These gains were attributed to the decliningapproval ratings of Republican PresidentDonald Trump, as well as a focus on affordability.^[20] Democrats are attempting to maintain this electoral momentum into the2026 elections, where they are targeting control of state legislative chambers inbattleground states across the country, as well as attempting to break Republican supermajorities in several other states.^[18][21][22]

All of the seats of theNew Jersey General Assembly were up for election in 2025. Democrats had controlled the chamber since the2001 elections. Democrats gained asupermajority in the chamber, flipping five seats for their largest majority since 1973.^[23]

New Jersey General Assembly

Party		Leader	Before	After	Change
	Democratic	Craig Coughlin	52	57	5
	Republican	John DiMaio	28	23	5
Total			80	80

All of the seats of theVirginia House of Delegates were up for election in 2025. Democrats had controlled the chamber since the2023 elections. Democrats won in a landslide, gaining 13 seats, greatly expanding their majority, their largest since1987.^[23][24] The most immediate effect of this victory was the survival of Democraticplans to pass a constitutional amendment to allow them to redraw the state's congressional districts amidst aflurry of mid-decade redistricting across the country. The amendment needs to pass the legislature in two consecutive legislative sessions before being sent to voters.^[25]

Virginia House of Delegates

Party		Leader	Before	After	Change
	Democratic	Don Scott	51	64	13
	Republican	Terry Kilgore	49	36	13
Total			100	100

There were 93 state, 1 territorial, and 1 informal legislative special elections held in 2025.^[26] Four seats flipped parties in vacancy-related special elections: Georgia's 121st House District, Iowa's 1st and 35th Senate Districts, and Pennsylvania's 36th Senate District flipped from Republican to Democratic.^[27][28][29] Special elections called due to court-ordered redistricting in Mississippi allowed Democrats to break the Republican supermajority in theMississippi Senate as well, gaining two seats, and gain one seat in theMississippi House of Representatives.^[30] Many Democratic special election candidates have outperformedKamala Harris' 2024 performance in their respective districts, often by 10percentage points or more, but almost all featured turnout less than half of that of the2024 election.^[31]

Democrats have additionally maintained their narrow control of theMinnesota Senate,Pennsylvania House of Representatives,Virginia Senate, andVirginia House of Delegates, through special election victories, as well as reaffirming the tie in theMinnesota House of Representatives.^[32][33][34] Their gains in theIowa Senate andMississippi Senate allowed them to break the Republicansupermajorities in those chambers as well.^[29][30]

Nine special elections for theMississippi Senate and five special elections for theMississippi House of Representatives were be held on November 4, 2025. These special elections were called as a result of redistricting mandated by a federal court designed to increase the number of majority-Black districts in both chambers to comply with theVoting Rights Act.^[133][134] Democrats flipped a total of three seats, breaking the Republicansupermajority in the state Senate.^[135]

Mississippi State Senate

Party		Before	Up	Won	After	Change
	Republican	36	7	5	34	2
	Democratic	16	2	4	18	2
Total		52	9	9	52

Mississippi House of Representatives

Party		Before	Up	Won	After	Change
	Republican	79	2	1	78	1
	Democratic	41	3	4	42	1
	Independent	2	0	0	2
Total		122	5	5	122

Utah does not normally conduct special elections to fill vacancies in its legislature. Rather, new members are selected by party delegates who live in the district where the vacancy occurred, and then they are appointed by the governor.Daniel Thatcher, who left the Republican Party to join theForward Party earlier in the year, asked that his replacement be appointed usingapproval voting in an election open to all voters in the district. He set up a website and in-person voting locations for this to take place.^[173]

• 2025 state legislature elections in the United States
• 2025 elections in the United States by state
• November 2025 in the United States
• State legislature elections in the United States by year

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