The opening of candidate filing last week brought on a fresh season of hope, of minorities to become majorities, of majorities to expand their reach, of incumbents to hang on for another term.
Put in the context of other elections in recent times, you shouldn’t expect the 2026 election to fulfill extravagant hopes, from any point of view.
Generations ago, changes of a large number of legislative seats in a single election was common, but that has become a rarity.
What recent elections tell us is that the odds are strongly against Rs taking control of either chamber, especially in what’s likely to be a Democratic year. But Democrats could have a shot, albeit with less than even odds, of taking one or both chambers with a true supermajority — that is, with two-thirds.
Since 2004, Democrats have held 16, 17 or 18 seats in the state Senate; a ceiling and floor have been of long standing. In the House, since Democrats pushed through a tie in 2010, that party has held from 34 to 37 seats.
The last time either party had a true supermajority — a two-to-one margin — in either chamber of the Oregon Legislature was in 1996, when Republicans controlled the Senate with exactly 20 votes, two-thirds. That was enough, if the caucus held together, to override (in that chamber) a veto from Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber. Since then, neither party has cracked the ceiling of 18 members. Going back further, the 1980 and 1982 elections gave Democrats 22 members, and 24 in the 1976 election.
You have to go back exactly a half century to find the last time either party got to 40 in the House. In that 1974 election, when Democrats nationally had one of their best election years ever in the wake of Watergate, that party held 40 of the 60 House seats. That marked a significant fast shift: The 1972 election gave Dems a majority of just 33, so in 1974 they gained seven seats, an unusual level of gain for either party since.
The political map was a lot more fluid then. While (as now) most of the Republicans came from either east of the Cascades (or Washington County, which is now blue), with a few others scattered in other areas, Democrats won in places they’d be considered non-competitive today.
The map is more hardened now.
That’s why the Cyrus Javadi party switch, though on the surface it’s only about a single seat, has a lot of significance, since the real battlement is so sparse. But his district, on the northwest coast, in the Astoria and Tillamook area, happens to be one of the competitive areas.
Javadi recently left the Republican Party and is running for his third as a Democrat. Since his recent breaks with the rest of the Republican caucus would have made a primary election win difficult, he may have a better path to re-election now. Or not; party changes can be tricky, and he has a complex path ahead.
Not only his own seat may be at stake. The Republican holding the Senate district covering that area, Suzanne Weber, is barred from re-election because she joined a Republican walkout in 2023. A Republican replacement candidate with Weber’s support, has announced, as have other candidates. But the nature of the election year, the politics around the Javadi switch and the normal competition of candidates in a politically marginal district makes the seat hard to call this early on.
The exact margins, the precise number of Democratic seats in the legislature, likely will come down to only a few seats and districts.
As many as a half-dozen seats across both chambers — mainly in the Salem, Gorge, Clackamas and outlying Bend areas — could account for some uncertainty as well. It’s not hard to figure: Those were hotspots last year too.
Taken together, Republicans, though in the minority, seem to have as many seats at risk as the Democrats do. That would mean they have only a long-shot chance of capturing either chamber, and they’ll almost have to run the table to hold Democrats below their current 36-seat technical supermajority for finance and some other bills.
Democrats will have to push to gain true supermajority status — two thirds in each chamber — but their chance of pulling it off are realistic. They would have to fare just about as well in the election to reach 40 seats, as the Republicans would to keep them below 36.
The usual precautions apply here. Candidate filing has only just begun; we won’t know the whole field in many cases for months. There’s another regular session to go, not to mention final work (presumably) in the current special which features a contentious tax and budget bill, and those developments along with others could influence some races. And along the way, people may drop out of contention too.
But if you want a best guess as the 2026 cycle opens, you’d be wise not stray too far from the legislative roster of today.
This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.