ABSTRACT
Gernerally speaking, gubernatorial elections have become more independent of national trends than used to be the case forty or fifty years ago. This is partly because states have shifted their gubernatorial elections into nonresidential elections years. But a more important reason is that gubernatorial candidates are more visible to voters and often they are able to win election or reelection despite a national trend in favour of the other party. In most states holding legislative elections in 2000 there were relatively small net shifts in the balance of seats held by Democrats and by Republicans. In order to understand and explain the outcome of these races, we need to review briefly some of the research that has been done on state legislative elections. Republicans recruited vigorously in an effort to field good candidates, and the Democrats tried to match their effort. The result was that almost every race in the Senate was contested.
