President Donald Trump will be vying with Richard M. Nixon on Tuesday for a dubious achievement in Connecticut politics: Which president’s midterm election will produce the smaller Republican minority in the General Assembly?

The broad bipartisan consensus among lawmakers is that Democrats will continue to hold comfortable majorities in the state’s Senate and House of Representatives when votes are counted Tuesday night.

Unresolved is the question of how much lower will Republicans fall on Tuesday, the 10th anniversary of their winning half the seats in the Senate and coming within five seats of a majority in the House. It was a high-water mark.

Democrats now have majorities of 102-49 in the House and 25-11 in the Senate. 

The post-Watergate election of 1974, a modern low point for GOP legislative races in Connecticut, yielded a legislature with Democratic advantages of 118-33 in the House and 29-7 in the Senate.

The results were stunning for two reasons: Not only were the GOP minorities tiny, but the party had been in the majority in 1973 and 1974. Republicans lost 60 seats in the House in 1974, going overnight from 93-58 majority to a 33-118 minority.

Comparatively, the GOP is facing an erosion of its minority status, not an upending of the status quo. Democrats say they expect to pick up three or four seats in the House and two in the Senate next week — though the ceiling is higher for Democrats in both chambers.

“It’s a question of those surprise seats,” said House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford. “To what extent are there surprise seats? I don’t know that there’s a surprise loss [for Democrats] this year, as there has been in the past. But are there surprise wins?”

At least four Republican Senate seats are in play, including two swing districts in Fairfield County where GOP incumbents are not seeking reelection: the 28th, held by Sen. Tony Hwang of Fairfield, and the 36th, held by Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich, the gubernatorial nominee.

Rob Blanchard, an advisor to Gov. Ned Lamont, is running for a second time as the Democratic nominee the 28th. In place of the moderate long-serving Hwang, Republicans have nominated a conservative, Amybeth Laroche. It is hard to find GOP optimism for holding the seat.

In the 36th, Republican Joe Kelly of Greenwich, a former school board chair and rugby coach, is trying replicate Fazio’s success in a district where Democratic voters have the edge and Trump has been a drag on down-ballot Republicans. He faces Jill Oberlander, a former chair of the town’s Board of Estimate and Taxation.

One of the incumbent Republicans in an unexpectedly competitive race is Sen. John Kissel of Enfield, who was elected in 1992 and is the longest-serving Republican in the Senate. His margins have shrunk in recent cycles, Democrats flipped local government in Enfield last year, and his opponent this year is a well-known Democrat, former Rep. David Kiner.

Another is Sen. Jeff Gordon of Woodstock, a physician who won the 13-town, east-of-the-river 35th District seat with less than 51% of the vote in 2022. His opponent is Ethan Werstler, also of Woodstock, a 26-year-old UConn graduate.

One of the endangered House Republicans also is from Enfield. Rep. Carol Hall, who won reelection two years ago in the 58th House District with just 50.7% of the vote, has a rematch with Democrat Rick LeBorious.

LeBorious is one of several Democrats who lost close races to try again in a cycle that polling shows is more favorable. In the 35th House, Republican Chris Aniskovich of Clinton is opposed again by Democrat Cinzia Lettieri, who lost with 49.5% of the vote in 2024.

In the shoreline 23rd House District of Lyme, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook and Westbrook, Democrat Jane Wisialowski is making another run after getting 48.5% of the vote in a close loss to Rep. Devin Carney, R-Old Saybrook. Carney is not running this year. The GOP nominee is Barbara Labriola.

Other open seats long-held by Republicans are in play, including the 8th House District, where Rep. Tim Ackert, R-Coventry, is quitting after an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor. The GOP nominee is Will Gifford, a 21-year-old UConn journalism student who posted a video in December in which he nods in seeming agreement as a white Christian nationalist figure tells him Judaism is “evil.” His opponent is Democrat Francis Lombard.

The list of seats where Republicans hope to make a gain is short: Their prime target is Rep. Rebecca Martinez, D-Plainville, who flipped a Republican seat in the 22nd House District of Farmington, Plainville and Southington two years ago. They also have hopes for an unusual gain: The GOP has endorsed Rep. Jill Barry, D-Glastonbury, a conservative who lost the Democratic nomination to  Moise “Moses” Carelus.

Republicans failed this year to nominate candidates in six Senate districts, all of which had GOP candidates two years ago.

They include two with open seats — one in the 13th District of Cheshire, Meriden, Middlefield and Middletown. It was won by a Republican as recently as 2016, but the GOP is not contesting Democratic Jack Fazzino, who has only a minor-party opponent in his run to succeed Sen. Jan Hochadel of Meriden.

The Democratic incumbents guaranteed reelection are Derek Slap of West Hartford, Gary Winfield of New Haven, Heron Gaston of Bridgeport and Pat Billie Miller of Stamford. Like Fazzino, Al Paolillo of New Haven has a minor-party opponent in his bid to succeed Sen. Martin M. Looney.

In the House, 33 Democrats and six Republicans are unopposed, including the top leaders of either party: House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, and House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford.

In both parties, the conversation already has turned beyond Tuesday to speculation about how rapidly the political landscape will change as Trump begins the last two years of his final term.

“We have to regroup as a party,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield. “I think both parties regroup after these election cycles.”

Trump, a uniquely dominant political force who has insisted voters make this election a referendum on him, has been an albatross for a Connecticut GOP and a godsend for Democrats when it comes to voter turnout.

“For Democrats, they are going to have to learn how to run without Trump,” Candelora said. “If you look at their messaging, it’s very hollow.”

Republicans are eager for the return of a political environment where they can bring the focus in Connecticut back to the high cost of living — a top concern of voters in public polling.

“I think that their challenge is when they’re going to have to be able to campaign on a platform that is going to be what they’re going to do in Hartford, as opposed to what’s going on in Washington D.C.,” Harding said. “I don’t think they have much to campaign on, and I think that’s where you’re going to see the Republican Party hopefully rejuvenated in the state.”

That was the successful GOP formula after the party retained only 37 state House seats in the Obama landslide of 2008. The party made steady gains after Democrat Dannel P. Malloy was elected governor in 2010, inheriting a budget shortfall met with tax increases, service cuts and demands for labor concessions.

Even if there is a blowout on Tuesday, Democrats are ready to caution against misreading the results as a mandate to the move the state dramatically to the left. In wave elections, the majority party tends to make advances they cannot hold.

“Once there is no longer a Trump factor in it, do we continue to hold on to the seats that we otherwise won because so many people turned out, not necessarily because of what Democrats did proactively, but because they’re so angry at Trump, right?” Rojas said. “That is a liability for us. And I’ve been talking about that on the fundraising circuit.”

Ritter noted the dissension in his party over Gov. Ned Lamont’s more centrist fiscal policies, relative to Democrats in the legislature. He already hears chatter about the party’s identity after Lamont, who is favored to win a third and final term on Tuesday.

Lamont was easily reelected four years ago, boosted by strong showings in suburbs that had favored the Republicans in his close win in 2018.

“I think Connecticut is moderate fiscally and liberal socially. And I think that defines the governor to a T,” Ritter said. “He’s been at the top of the ticket. It’s the third time, and we’ve done well all those times in those places like Avon, Simsbury and Fairfield. And he’s going to do very well again. If you know, if you run somebody a little more, a little more to the left in four years, I don’t know what happens.”