ABSTRACT
Divided government has been defined and discussed primarily in national terms: The Republicans consistently win the presidency while the Democrats win Congress or at least the House of Representatives. Election postmortems in the 1980s regularly emphasized the shallowness of Republican victories. Not only did the Republicans fail to crack the House of Representatives but, in state elections, the Democrats typically captured more than 60 percent of the governorships and legislative seats. The Michigan and Nevada cases apparently reflect intensely competitive state party systems. Republican prospects in state legislative races clearly rise and fall with national election outcomes. A complete analysis should bear out the state-level variation that reflects national forces. The contemporary California legislature epitomizes the professional pole of the amateur-professional dimension. The Massachusetts legislature was under Democratic control between 1958 and 1990, but from 1964 to 1974, the Republicans controlled the governorship.
