This story sums up the U.S. House races. It seems likely that the Republican Party will hold a majority of the seats, but that is not certain.

Utah elects its statewide state offices in presidential years. A party remains on the ballot if it polls 2% for any statewide office, federal or state. All of these minor parties polled enough votes for at least one office to keep qualified status: Libertarian, Constitution, Independent American, United Utah, and Forward.

The only party that didn’t keep its qualified status is the Green Party, which didn’t run for any statewide offices except President.

Utah is the only state in which the Forward Party is now a qualified party.

Pennsylvania law does not allow a party to be on the ballot automatically for all partisan offices unless it has voter registration of 15% of the statewide total. Obviously only the Democratic and Republican Parties meet this definition.

However, Pennsylvania allows groups to be on the ballot automatically in special elections if they meet the state’s definition of a “political party”, which is a group that had a statewide nominee whose vote total equals 2% of the highest winning statewide candidate’s vote. Also, such groups are listed as a choice on the voter registration form.

The Libertarian Party polled enough votes for each of the three statewide state offices to meet the definition. Its best showing was Auditor, with 119,375 votes. None of the other groups on the ballot met the vote test, although the Green Party is fairly close for Attorney General. The test requires 68,873 votes, and Richard Weiss, Green for Attorney General, has 64,775.

The Constitution, Forward, and American Solidarity Parties did not come close to meeting the vote test.