AUGUSTA – Democrats tentatively claimed Wednesday to have won majorities in both houses of the incoming Legislature while Gov. John Baldacci sought to lay out the new lawmakers’ first chores.

Whether Baldacci’s desire to get off to a fast start in the new legislative session coincides with the way lawmakers themselves want to proceed remains to be seen.

For the two years of Baldacci’s time in the Blaine House and long before that, talk of tax reform has often talked itself out.

Moreover, elections of the House and Senate leaders for the soon-to-start two-year legislative session have yet to be held and contests for top posts are expected.

Baldacci spent the morning after Election Day detailing his plans for submitting a new tax reform package in the first week of December, delivering a two-year budget blueprint a month after that and then putting forth a new state borrowing proposal designed to stimulate jobs.

Voters who this week rejected a statewide property tax cap that the governor had opposed effectively gave state government a new opportunity to “do it the right way,” Baldacci said.

Legislative candidates and campaign workers, meanwhile, along with state elections officials, chased around Wednesday for more definitive reports from polling places around the state.

A compilation by the House of Representatives clerk’s office suggested that Democrats won elections in 76 House districts on Tuesday as Republicans won 71.

One district election was credited to a Green party member and one to an independent, leaving results from two more districts still to come.

Revisions of reported results and recounts are still possible but if such a partisan breakdown were to hold, it would represent a reduced level of Democratic control in the 151-member House and the barest of possible majorities for the party in charge.

Voting in 2002 gave Democrats 80 seats and Republicans 67, with three going to independents and one to a Green.

On the 35-member Senate side, Democrats expressed confidence that they had at least retained an 18-seat majority – despite seeing four of their incumbents defeated in Tuesday’s balloting.

Democrats outnumbered Republicans 18-17 in the Senate for the last two years.

Members of the new Legislature are scheduled to be sworn in on Dec. 1 and customarily it takes time for House and Senate leaders to work out committee assignments.

Baldacci, who has spoken repeatedly of an interest in rekindling bipartisanship within the Legislature, expressed hope Wednesday that the new session would feature the sort of across-the-aisle cooperation that marked his first year as chief executive.

He also said he would like to see a special legislative committee named and set to work next month to demonstrate that, when it comes to tax reform, “this is not business as usual.”

First things first, though. While lawmakers of all stripes have vowed to put tax policy at the top of their agendas, only next week will caucuses of incoming Democrats and Republicans begin meeting to pick their own leadership teams in advance of the Dec. 1 swearing-in.

Incumbent Democrats who apparently suffered defat at the polls on Tuesday included: Walter Ash of Belfast, Philip Bennett of Caribou, Bonita Breault of Buxton, William Earle of Damariscotta, Susanne Ketterer of Madison, Edward Pellon of Machias, Edward Suslovic of Portland and Raymond Wotton of Littleton.

Results from the re-election bid by George Bunker of Kossuth Township were unclear.

Sitting House Republicans who apparently lost were Lawrence Jacobsen of Waterboro, William Rogers of Brewer and Oscar Stone of Berwick.

Unofficial reports had four Democratic incumbents losing Senate re-election contests: Neria Douglass of Auburn, Christopher Hall of Bristol, Pamela Hatch of Skowhegan and Stephen Stanley of Medway.

Republican incumbents Carolyn Gilman of Westbrook and Tom Sawyer of Bangor were listed among the apparent losing Senate candidates.