A little more blue state good news; Pittsburgh's county went Democratic again after having a GOP exec for 4 years, and the Dems swept the state wide judicial elections this year.

So... is New Jersey going to redraw its Congressional districts?

New Jersey has a commission system, where the Democratic commissioners and the Republican commissioners each come up with a plan that helps their side, but hope that it's less ridiculous than the other party's plan. Then the seventh, neutral commissioner picks the plan that's less horrible.

So gaining control of the legislature doesn't put re-redistricting on the table in N.J. But I gather that the Dems did just fine under the commission system this time around anyway, so there wouldn't be that much incentive to take the political heat and redo the lines.

A correction: while RI's legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic (I think there are something like 12 Republicans in the House and 6 in the Senate), we have had a Republican governor since 1994, first the boring, unproductive Lincoln Almond, and now the more engaging (but slightly more conservative and partisan) Don Carcieri. Of course, since RI is the only state in the country without separation of powers, the General Assembly basically runs the show anyway, but there have been a lot of reforms in recent years and separation of powers will be instituted within a few, plus as I said Carcieri is being as assertive as he can.

Thanks for the correction-- which reduces the number of states with full Democratic control to an even smaller number.

You are mistaken about Kentucky and Mississippi going GOP. The governors races don't tell the whole story, look at the other races. Very mixed bag, no overall partisan swing.