A blue wave washed across much of the state Tuesday, but not southeastern Connecticut, where Republicans have shown increasing strength in recent elections, even as the party sinks elsewhere.

The delegation that the region sends to Hartford stayed largely intact; totally when it came to the state Senate seats and mostly in the contests for the House of Representatives.

All four incumbent state senators in our region emerged with victories — Republican Senators Heather Somers in the 18th District and Paul Formica in the 20th District, and Democrats Cathy Osten in the 19th District and Norm Needleman in the 33rd District.

Going into the election, six Democrats and five Republicans split the 11 House seats in our region. By the time the last absentee ballots were counted that breakdown had shifted six to five in favor of the Republicans. The change resulted from the 297-vote victory of Republican Greg Howard over freshman Democratic Rep. Kate Rotella in the 43rd District of Stonington and North Stonington.

Howard, a Stonington police detective, benefited from his ties in the community, including his volunteering in youth sports. Howard, running particularly strong in North Stonington, had criticized Rotella’s support for the Police Accountability Bill, particularly provisions he argued handcuffed police when it came to conducting searches and unreasonably exposed police to lawsuits.

Our region, with Republicans not only holding their own but picking up a seat, was in contrast to the rest of the state. Preliminary results showed Democrats — riding the coattails of Joe Biden’s 17 percentage-point victory over President Trump in Connecticut — picking up between seven and nine seats in the House and two in the Senate. That would increase Democratic dominance in the two chambers, with a majority of at least 98-53 in the House and 24-12 control of the Senate.

The relative stability in the local delegation is good and bad.

Good because local legislators have shown they can work together across party lines when it comes to matters of particular importance for the region, such as state support for tourism and assuring a job-training pipeline to feed into job expansion at Electric Boat and the contractors that support its submarine construction operations.

For the region’s good, such cooperation must continue in support of such things as the planned development of a massive operation at State Pier in New London to support construction of offshore wind-power fields and in pushing Gov. Ned  Lamont to work with the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes to legalize online sports betting and gaming.

The split delegation is bad, on the other hand, because Democrats with their strong majorities will be driving policy. This region will not have the political pull that urban centers and other Democratic Party strongholds will wield.

Once solidly in the hands of Democrats, the 18th and 20th Senatorial Districts are illustrative of the political shift in the region, with Sen. Formica winning election to a fourth term in the 20th and Sen. Somers to a third in the 18th. Democrats thought this year gave them a good shot to recapture those seats. They were wrong.

The two incumbents benefited from ticket splitting, with major towns in both their districts voting strongly Biden, while giving Formica and Somers sufficient support to assure their re-election.

Both parties will be looking for lessons from these results. The well-heeled communities in the state’s southwestern corner were once the rock bed of Connecticut Republicanism, supplying not only sure votes but campaign cash. Combined with Republicans elected from the state’s rural, conservative areas it gave the party a fighting chance.

But that dominance has eroded in successive elections and the party’s fulcrum has shifted east. Speaking to the Connecticut Mirror, Rep. Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, noted this change.

“They (Democrats) continue to gain the affluent districts and Republicans continue to hold and pick up the more blue-collar working-class communities,” said Candelora, expected to be the next House minority leader.

Democrats, meanwhile, need to consider why these working-class voters in our region, once a core Democratic constituency that emerged from its industrial past, now affiliate with Connecticut Republicans. Many, it would seem, see Democrats as the party of progressive elites, welfare programs, and government workers, not the struggling middle-class.

Stereotyping, issues of race, the growth of social media, and political messaging all contribute to a complex political picture.

On Tuesday it added up to a relatively good day for local Republicans on an otherwise bad day for their party in the state.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.