Democrats running for the Kansas House took over 13 Republican seats in Tuesday’s elections, but lost one of their own, which probably gives them enough to form a governing coalition with moderate Republicans on key issues like taxes and education spending.

But Democrats gained only one seat in the Kansas Senate, far fewer than they had hoped, and even it was a seat that Republicans had all but conceded well before the election.

According to unofficial results from Tuesday night — which still weren’t fully complete late Wednesday morning due to late reporting in Johnson County — Democrats will hold 40 of 125 seats in the Kansas House next year and nine of 40 in the Kansas Senate.

The one Senate seat Democrats gained was the 25th District in Wichita, where incumbent Michael O’Donnell stepped down to run for county commission. Democrat Lynn Rogers beat opponent Jim Price, a Republican who has multiple criminal convictions in his background, 58-42 percent.

In the House, though, Democrats took out some GOP heavyweights, including Rep. Marc Rhoades of Newton, a former Appropriations Committee chairman, and Amanda Grosserode of Lenexa, who had chaired the House Education Budget Committee.

Also falling Tuesday night were GOP Reps. John Bradford and Tony Barton, both of Leavenworth County; Lane Hemsley of Topeka; Joe Scapa and Steve Anthimides of Wichita; Jan Pauls of Hutchinson; and Sue Boldra of Hays. Boldra lost to the same Democrat she unseated four years ago, Eber Phelps of Hays.

In addition, Democrat Cindy Neighbor of Shawnee won the seat that is currently held by Republican John Rubin, who did not run this year. And Jerry Stogsdill of Prairie Village won the seat currently held by moderate Republican Barbara Bollier, who stepped down and ran successfully for a Senate seat.

The one seat Democrats lost this year was the 63rd District in Atchison County. Democrat Jerry Henry stepped down from that seat to run for the Senate against Republican Dennis Pyle. He lost that race, however, and Republican John Eplee won that House seat.

Those Democratic gains, however, are in addition to the losses that conservative Republicans suffered in the Aug. 2 primary, when eight conservatives in the House and six in the Senate lost their seats to more moderate candidates.

Add to that the number of Republican lawmakers who retired this year — 18 in the House and eight in the Senate — and it becomes apparent that the Kansas Legislature will be a very different place in 2017 than it has been for the last four years.

Emporia State University political scientist Michael Smith said that should be enough to give Democrats and moderate Republicans a working majority on some issues. But he said there’s a caveat.

“The caveat is, it’s not veto-proof,” he said. “Now we have to look at the dynamics of how the governor comes in with the veto.”

In recent weeks, Gov. Sam Brownback has been less adamant than he has in the past about his unwillingness to revisit his tax policies, particularly the total tax exemption for pass-through income derived from certain kinds of businesses and farm operations.

And Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, a conservative, has made public gestures showing her willingness to work with moderates on a number of issues.

Brownback did not immediately comment on the legislative elections. But his press secretary, Eileen Hawley, issued a statement that read: “Governor Brownback congratulates all of the winners and looks forward to working with them to make Kansas the best place in America to raise a family and grow a business. He was pleased to see that many incumbents who support small government, pro-life, and pro-liberty policies were successfully re-elected.”

Meanwhile … all of the candidates, Republicans and Democrats alike, who worked so hard to win their elections are going to learn Thursday just how difficult the job they signed up for is going to be.

Thursday is when the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group issues its new, official estimates of how much money the state will have to work with for the rest of this fiscal year, and looking ahead to the next two fiscal years.

With the state general fund already facing a shortfall of more than $80 million for the current year, it’s a safe bet that the new projections can be summed up in one word: “less.”

Finney County controversy

People who were following the Kansas elections on Twitter Tuesday night might have noticed considerable chatter about the Finney County Clerk’s Office, which abruptly took down a web page that showed where all the polling places were in that county.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said that was a direct result of the scrutiny Finney County was under from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Finney County is in southwest Kansas, and its largest city, Garden City, is home to several meatpacking plants, which accounts for the area’s high immigrant population. As a result, the Justice Department had announced before the election that Finney County would be among the 67 jurisdictions where it would be monitoring on the ground for violations of the federal Voting Rights Act.

One provision of that act, known as the “5 percent rule,” says that election officials must provide ballots and other voting materials, including instructions, in multiple languages if 5 percent or more of the voting-age population speaks something other than English as their first language. Finney County is one of a handful of Kansas counties that falls into that category.

The problem with the web page, Kobach said, was that it was only in English.

“The Department of Justice was looking at anything the county produced that wasn’t in both English and in Spanish,” Kobach said. “The attorney representing the county, in an abundance of caution, said, well, since our website telling you where to vote is only in English right now, we’ll have to take it down or the DOJ will jump all over us.”

But Mark Johnson, an attorney who teaches election law at the University of Kansas, said he found it curious that the county didn’t have Spanish language web pages from the beginning.

“Language minority rules have been in place for more than 30 years,” he said. “Is this the first time they noticed the website didn’t include Spanish language information? It’s a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act. Taking it down was a tacit admission that it was noncompliant.”

Judging the pollsters

Of all the people who won elections in Kansas Tuesday night, one of the biggest winners may turn out to be the Docking Institute for Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University. Just a few days before the election, that institute published a “flash poll” that turned out to be more accurate than anyone else’s.

That poll had estimated that Republican Donald Trump was leading Democrat Hillary Clinton, 58-34 percent in Kansas, a margin of 22 points. The final, unofficial margin was 57-36 percent, a margin of 21 points.

The poll drew attention, and a fair amount of skepticism, because it was so different from other polls that had been done, including FHSU’s own “Kansas Speaks” poll that had come out only two weeks earlier showing Trump with a much narrower lead, 47-39 percent.

But other polls had shown the race much closer as well, including a SurveyUSA poll conducted for KSN-TV in Wichita one week before the election, which showed Trump leading by just 11 points, 49-38 percent.

There were some significant differences in those polls. The Kansas Speaks poll was conducted over a six-week period, from Sept. 1 through Oct. 13, which covered a period in which many voters apparently had not made up their minds, or perhaps were not as committed as it might have seemed. The “flash” poll, conducted Nov. 1-3, represented a much more focused “snapshot” in time.

The SurveyUSA poll, meanwhile, was conducted Oct. 26-30. Thirty percent of the interviews were conducted before FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress saying he was reopening an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, while 70 percent were conducted after that announcement.