See The GOP Gains in Progressive State Houses: Voters rebuke leftwing lurches in Minnesota, Michigan and Vermont. WSJ editorial.

"The rightward swing by voters last week looks like it will hand control of the U.S. House to Republicans, as the final votes are being counted. Less noticed by the Trump-centric press are GOP gains in even progressive state houses. 

No governorships changed partisan control, but Republicans broke Democratic monopolies in Michigan and Minnesota with gains in their statehouses. These were rebukes to left-wing policy overreach.

After Democrats won a trifecta in Minnesota in 2022, Gov. Tim Walz used his slim legislative majorities to advance a far-left cultural agenda, raise taxes and redistribute income. Democrats made the state a “trans refuge” for children seeking gender-affirming treatments and removed nearly all restrictions on abortion.

They also imposed a 1% surcharge on investment income over $1 million and established a new family and medical leave entitlement financed by a 0.88 percentage point payroll tax. This raised the top marginal tax rate to 10.85% on investment income and 10.73% on wages, among the highest in the country.

Democrats in Minnesota lost three seats in the state House, resulting in a 67-67 party split. This means Democrats can’t raise taxes willy-nilly to fix a looming budget deficit.

A similar backlash played out in Michigan where Democrats won a trifecta in 2022 for the first time in nearly 40 years. They then repealed the state’s right-to-work law that gave workers a choice of belonging to a union. They quintupled the average size of a “working families tax credit” and imposed a 100% “clean electricity” mandate.

Voters weren’t fans of this one-party Democratic rule. Republicans flipped the state House by knocking off several incumbents despite being outspent in the races by nearly four-to-one. The GOP picked up a seat in the Upper Peninsula that Democrats had held for more than 70 years.

While expanding government, liberal populists have discouraged private business growth. Minnesota and Michigan have been losing jobs in manufacturing and other private industries for two years. Almost all of the new jobs added in both states since Democrats seized control in January 2023 have been in government, healthcare and social assistance.

Leftwing economic populism also took a hit in Vermont, the home of Bernie Sanders socialism. Republicans flipped 17 seats in the House and six in the state Senate—the most in at least three decades—to end the Democrats’ supermajority. Republicans beat one Democratic Senator who had served in the Legislature for more than 30 years.

Credit goes to GOP Gov. Phil Scott, who campaigned against Democrats who overrode his vetoes of bills to raise property taxes and impose a 0.44% payroll tax to fund child care. They also imposed a quasi-cap-and-trade program on suppliers of home heating oil to fund climate welfare and a 100% renewable electricity mandate by 2035.

Mr. Sanders is telling Democrats they lost because the national party wasn’t leftwing enough on economics. He won’t find support for that claim nationwide or even in Vermont."