If you're looking for a good introduction to the 2008 election, you could do far worse than Tim Storey's cover story in this month's State Legislatures Magazine:

With only a small number of governor races in 2008, legislatures are the main battlefield for control of states. There are legislative elections in 44 states with a total of 5,824 legislative seats up for grabs. That represents 79 percent of the 7,382 total legislative seats in the United States. In addition, 78 legislative seats are up in Puerto Rico, 20 in American Samoa and all 15 Senate seats in the U.S. Virgin Islands. There are no legislative elections this year in Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia. In Michigan and Minnesota, there are no senate elections, but all house seats are up.

Delaware, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Utah, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia elect governors this year. Most are not considered competitive, with the exception of Missouri and Washington. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato rates both as toss-ups. Headed into 2008, Democrats control the governor’s mansion in 28 states and Republicans in 22. In the 11 states up this year, Democrats hold six of the governors and Republicans five.

Storey makes the important point that Democrats are operating in a landscape with few easy targets after our success in the last two cycles. That said, we do have opportunities to pick up new chambers:

For Democrats, the best chances for taking control appear to be the Delaware House, Montana House, Nevada Senate, New York Senate, Ohio House, and Wisconsin Assembly. None of these will be easy. Michael Sargeant, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, is taking nothing for granted. “We’re excited about our chances for gains this year, but our candidates still have to get out and work hard.”

Last night, I read a piece on MyDD which made me smile.

In her journal, a blogger named desmoinesdem carefully laid out five reasons for supporting Democratic legislative candidates in the fall. She's spot on. (And by the way, the candidate she mentions first -- Jerry Sullivan -- is putting DLCCWeb to good use. Check it out).

I encourage you to read her entire post, but I want to draw attention to one particular argument she makes:

You may think that Obama will give down-ticket candidates all the help they need in November. But depending on where you live, the Obama campaign may not be putting its GOTV muscle in the crucial legislative districts.

I was very concerned to learn a few days ago that the Iowa Democratic Party has in effect shut down its "coordinated campaign" and transferred control over GOTV statewide to the Obama campaign.

What's best for maximizing Obama's presidential vote is not necessarily what's best for maximizing the number of Democrats elected to the state legislature.

This is great point that is often missed in national political analysis. Even by organizing an unprecedented ground game, the national ticket might not help some of our candidates. And in those places, we're going to depend on volunteers and activists (like desmoinesdem) to contribute their time knocking on doors and making calls in order to win legislative races.

Chris Kromm at Facing South posts some more exciting news about Democratic voter registration in Georgia and North Carolina:

Georgia has grown the most: an astounding 300,000 new voters have been added to the rolls since January 2008, putting the total number of active registrants at 4.7 million […]

According to N.C. State Board of Election statistics, just over 203,000 new voters have registered since January.

Like Georgia, new registrations have favored Democratic, independent and African-American voters. African-American voters have gone from 20.1% to 20.7% of the N.C. electorate in 2008. By party, Democrats have gone from 44.8% to 45.3%, and unaffiliated voters from 20.9% to 21.4% since January.

Those gains have been at the expense of Republicans, who went from being 34.3% of N.C. voters in January to 33.3% by the end of June -- a one-point drop.

This comes on the heels of a Democratic voter registration drive in Louisiana, which completely overwhelmed the state board of elections.

This is obviously only half the battle (still gotta get registered voters to the polls on Election Day) but these reports are still unreservedly good news.

Right now, I’m fighting against the urge to get my hopes up for the November. But it’s hard when you keep seeing numbers like this from Pew Research:

A majority of Americans (57%) say they have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, up six points since July 2007 and 10 points since July 2006.

In contrast, views of the Republican Party remain at historic lows. Currently, 53% of Americans express unfavorable views of the Republican Party while only 39% say they have a favorable opinion of the party. These ratings are unchanged from July 2007, and have changed little since April 2006.

That’s great news for Democrats nationwide, but what does it mean for statehouses?

The strength of the brand certainly ought to help some legislators, but for the most part, our candidates will be running local races focused on a host of issues that are different from those obsessed about in Washington. None of us are immune to the enthusiasm that is out there right now, but the reality is that we still have turn out enough votes on Election Day to win. The challenge we face is putting all this energy to work.