Since 2009, Americans have rejected Democrats over and over again at the state and federal levels.
Back in 2008, when Barack Obama proclaimed that he would ‘fundamentally transform America,’ it is doubtful that many of his Democrat-party backers believed that he meant it in this way: From 2009 through January 2015, Democrats have lost nearly 1,000 seats in federal and state legislatures, according to Politifact analysis:
“He’s lost almost 70 Democrats since he’s been president,” [ABC’s Cokie] Roberts said of Congress [in 2015], “and more than 900 state legislators. So he needs to give Democrats something to run on.”
We had heard iterations of Democratic losses on the congressional level, but never such a large number of losses for Democrats in legislatures across the country.
Turns out, Roberts is correct.
Our analysis shows Democrats have lost 910 seats since Obama took office. (You can see the changes in every state here.)
We took a state-by-state look of lost seats from the best source available, the National Conference of State Legislatures. Using the group’s data, we compared the number of Democratic seats in early 2009, when Obama took office, to the number of seats after the 2014 midterms.
That 970-seat count, of course, occurred before last Tuesday’s election where Democrats lost again. And, of course, the Democrats lost the presidency as well.
In sum, the Obama presidency has resulted in a “bloodbath” for Democrats.
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