The 2022 elections for the Pennsylvania General Assembly were the first with new legislative maps, and the Democrats won control of the state's lower legislative chamber that year by the thinnest of margins — a single seat. They hadn’t previously controlled the chamber since 2010.

This year, Pennsylvania’s rightward shift at the top of the ticket was very closely watched nationwide. But with conservative Democrat Frank Burns from Cambria County holding his seat, the Democrats have now managed to hold on to the General Assembly by the exact same razor-thin margin as in 2022. With the statewide vote shifting to the GOP, it's remarkable that the balance of power in the General Assembly is unchanged.

While ballots are still being counted in Pennsylvania’s 2024 Senate race, Republican Dave McCormick has a lead of half a percentage point at present — a notable shift from 2022, when Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman beat Mehmet Oz by almost 5 percentage points. Republicans did even better downballot in Pennsylvania — the GOP's attorney general candidate prevailed statewide by almost 5 percentage points, and their candidates for auditor general and state treasurer did even better.

While this surprising stasis requires more analysis, I suspect that the distribution of Republican votes was part of the story. Higher turnout in rural, GOP-leaning parts of the state might not have helped GOP House candidates even as it may have put Trump and quite possibly McCormick over the top.

ABC News reports that Republican Rep. Scott Perry has held off his challenger, Democrat Janelle Stelson, in Pennsylvania's 10th District. Perry, a former chair of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, was favored to win this central Pennsylvania district that includes the state capital of Harrisburg, though the limited polling from earlier this year showed the two locked in a very close race, with Stelson even leading in some polls. With 99% of the expected vote reporting, Perry leads 50.8% to Stelson's 49.2%.

On the other side of the country, Democratic Rep. Andrea Salinas is projected to keep her seat in Oregon's 6th District, which includes Salem and part of the Portland suburbs. This isn't a big surprise in the blue-leaning district, which was created after 2020 redistricting gave Oregon one more seat in the House. But Salinas had won election by just 2.5 points in 2022, so Republicans saw it as a potential pickup opportunity. This year, she faced the same opponent, Republican Mike Erickson, but she's currently poised to improve on her 2022 margin: With 72% of the expected vote reporting, she leads Erickson by 6 percentage points.

New York's 4th and 19th Districts are the fourth and fifth House seats that Democrats have flipped from red to blue so far, joining one other seat from New York and two seats that were dramatically redrawn in redistricting. However, Republicans have flipped six seats from blue to red: three in North Carolina that flipped because of redistricting, and then three in the northern presidential swing states. Altogether, Republicans have netted just one seat thus far — which goes a long way toward explaining why they're on pace to win about as many seats as they did in 2022.

On the presidential and Senate side, of course, it's a different story. All the flips there have been toward Republicans. Trump has so far been projected to win five states that Biden carried in 2020, and Republicans have made a net gain of three seats in the Senate — so far, all in states that Trump carried by a healthy margin.

Voters in Nebraska and Missouri are projected to approve ballot measures that would guarantee workers paid sick days and the measure is well ahead in Alaska, according to The New York Times. The Missouri and Alaska measures would also eventually raise the minimum wage in those states to $15 an hour.

With nearly all of the expected vote reported, the Nebraska measure passed 74% to 26%, and Missouri's passed 58% to 42%. With a little more than three-quarters of the expected vote in in Alaska, its measure is ahead 57% to 43%, but hasn't been officially projected yet.

The states will join 14 others and Washington, D.C. in guaranteeing paid sick days for workers for short-term illnesses and to take care of sick family members. Most of the measures require employers to allow employees to accrue time off for hours worked and prevent them from retaliating against employees who use them. The push for paid sick days predates the COVID-19 pandemic, but became even more pressing while the country tried to control the spread of the virus. While a short-lived federal law allowed workers affected by the coronavirus to take paid time off, the U.S. remains one of the only among its few peer countries that does not have a federal law guaranteeing paid sick days or longer term paid medical and family leave for workers.

Harris made paid family leave (which provides for longer-term leaves, not just sick days) a key part of her platform, but it didn't translate into support for her candidacy. But it's not unusual for voters in red states to pass progressive ballot measures while also voting for more progressive candidates who may not support those same measures. These three are just the latest of many worker-friendly policies have passed by ballot initiative across the country in recent years.