Leadership on the Ballot 2026 — MultiState Elections

Chamber control gets the headlines, but the person who decides whether your bill gets a hearing is the speaker or the chamber president. This page tracks all 99 presiding officers of the state legislatures and what happens to each of them in 2026: who faces voters for their own seat, who is running for something else and will hand off the gavel regardless, and whose chamber simply isn't up this cycle.

The gavel opens regardless

These leaders are on a 2026 ballot for a different office. However each race ends, their chamber picks a new presiding officer when it organizes in January.

How this is built. A leader who lost a primary is not on the ballot: status depends on a live path to November, meaning a general-election candidacy that is not withdrawn or lost, or a primary not yet lost. Leadership comes from our chamber_leaders records, one presiding officer per chamber, each linked to a real legislator rather than stored as a name, so it joins to that person's seat and races. A leader's 2026 status compares the district of their 2026 candidacy to the district they currently hold — not the chamber name and not the seat record, because in multi-member districts a member's seat row can sit on a different lettered seat than the election they run in. Four states seat a lieutenant governor as presiding officer ex officio; their tenure follows the lieutenant governor's race, not a legislative one, and they are marked accordingly. Leadership elections happen after November, when each chamber organizes: this page reports who is exposed, never who will hold the gavel in January. Majority and minority floor leaders are not yet tracked here.