You may remember a little while ago we had an election which seemed to have an impact on party breakdown across the states. Now that most of the bills that are going to be introduced this year have been introduced, I thought I would take a look at the impact of party of the years.
First, you can always check out our great resource detailing the current breakdown of each statehouse: https://www.billtrack50.com/Resources/BT50_Leg_Makeup.pdf
To start with, let’s just take a simple look at total party representation over the years (note in odd years more states are in session than in even years).
Of course that’s only part of the story. What impact has the changing mix of party representation had on legislation introduced and passed? Not as much as you might think. Although the historic gap between how many bills are introduced by Democrats and how many by Republicans is narrowing. (This is as of March 24, 2015, there are still some bills yet to be introduced.)
How about bills actually getting passed? (In this case only a few states are done with their session, so most bills that will pass have not yet done so, so consider 2015 as just a dubious preview of relative numbers.) Interestingly, the gap does not seem to be widening. But we won’t know for sure until later in the year.
Also, just for fun, I took a look at average bill word count over time, by party.
That’s quite a change in just a few years!
Finally, let’s look at how is bipartisanship is doing across the country.
Again, keeping in mind most bills that will pass haven’t yet, it is actually looking pretty good for bipartisanship. There have been a similar number introduced this year, and we see they are maintaining, or even slightly increasing, their increased chance of passing over a non bipartisan bill.
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