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 Map of upper house elections: Democrats retained control Special elections held | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Map of lower house elections: Democrats retained control Republicans gained control Special elections held | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 2021 United States state legislative elections were held on November 2, 2021. Three legislative chambers in two states, New Jersey and Virginia, held regularly scheduled elections. These off-year elections coincided with other state and local elections, including gubernatorial elections in both states.
As a result of the elections, New Jersey retained its Democratic trifecta, while a divided government was established in Virginia, as Republicans won back the lower house of the Virginia legislature, which they lost two years earlier.
Summary table
Regularly scheduled elections were held in 3 of the 99 state legislative chambers in the United States. Nationwide, regularly scheduled elections were held for 220 of the 7,383 legislative seats. This table only covers regularly scheduled elections; additional special elections took place concurrently with these regularly scheduled elections.
| State | Upper House | Lower House | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seats up | Total | % up | Term | Seats up | Total | % up | Term | |
| New Jersey | 40 | 40 | 100 | 2 | 80 | 80 | 100 | 2 |
| Virginia | 0 | 40 | 0 | 4 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 2 |
Electoral predictions
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
| State | PVI[1] | Chamber | Last election |
Sabato October 18, 2021[2] |
Elections Daily November 1, 2021[3][4] |
Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | D+6 | Senate | D 25-15 | Safe D | Safe D | D 24-16 |
| General Assembly | D 52-28 | Safe D | Safe D | D 46-34 | ||
| Virginia | D+2 | |||||
| House of Delegates | D 55-45 | Tilt D | Tossup | R 52-48 |
State summaries
New Jersey
All seats of the New Jersey Senate and the New Jersey General Assembly were up for election. In 2021, senators were elected to two-year terms in single-member districts, while Assembly members were elected to two-year terms in two-member districts.[5] Democrats retained majority control in both chambers.
| Party | Leader | Before | After | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Stephen Sweeney | 25 | 24 |  1
| |
| Republican | Thomas Kean Jr. (retiring) | 15 | 16 |  1
| |
| Total | 40 | 40 | |||