This year’s election cycle brought us a number of exciting races and even a handful of upsets as the final numbers were tallied.

Newly drawn district lines and shifting within the legislature made the path to victory more difficult for parties that previously had a stronghold on their district. Regions where Republicans or Democrats were previously shoe-ins to win their respective elections have now shifted.

Political science professor Jonathan Parent from Le Moyne college says we could expect the political shakeup to continue in the coming years thanks to the state’s redistricting.

“Redistricting can have a huge impact on the leaning and in particular districts, depending on how the lines are drawn, depending on what communities are included or not included. You know, we have a pretty good sense of what types of people are likely to vote, what way. And so, yeah, the people who draw the lines have a whole lot of power,” said Parent.

That shakeup has already happened across a number of our regions.

Looking at senate district 52, Republicans held the seat for over 30 years, beginning with longtime Senator Tom Libous, and later Senator Fred Akshar.

The previous map encompassed Broome County and rural Chenango and Delaware counties. But following redistricting, the longtime Republican district included Tompkins and Cortland Counties, leading to the first Democrat win in decades in Lea Webb.

“You’re including Tompkins County, that’s going to be an overwhelmingly Democratic county. And so if you're adding that to a county like Broome, which has probably a bit of a smaller population, then that's going to overwhelm you. In this case, the Republican votes that would be expected from Broome,” said Parent.

Democrat Lea Webb defeated Republican Rich David, the former Binghamton Mayor and the man who many believed would easily win the district before the lines were redrawn.

Parent says while redistricting is nothing new, this year's round brought potentially the most controversy.

“They had set up an independent commission that was tasked with coming up with an ostensibly neutral map, and they just couldn't agree. And they ended up producing two different maps, you know, one that would have Democrats and one would if they were Republicans, which led the legislature to step in and then present this, you know, really heavily Democratically gerrymandered map, which then itself got thrown out by the court,” said Parent.

It’s no question our state is in for a major shakeup in the coming years and we could see some new faces take center stage.

Spectrum News 1 has reached out to Webb's campaign, but have yet to receive a response.

David released a statement congratulating Webb on the win.