Drawing Congressional Districts Matters
Everybody knows that Barack Obama and the Democrats retained the presidency and a majority in the Senate by winning just about every single battle ground state. Everybody also knows that Republicans maintained their majority of the seats in the House of Representatives. I was trying to process this fact when I saw this tweet by @sethdmichaels which really got me thinking. In Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia the President won a clear majority of the vote. Further, ALL four Democrat senate candidates in those states won majorities of the vote. Yet the GOP won 42 of the 59 House races in play. Pretty amazing when you think about it. The GOP could not win the majority of votes in 8 separate state wide elections, but won over 70% of the House districts!
On Saturday November 10 I saw this post by Weigel and decided I needed to find concrete figures. I started collecting results from the Politico “Elections Results” page and compiling it into a spreadsheet. Could it be that Democrat candidates received more votes than GOP candidates? Is the effect of gerrymandering so great that it enabled the Republicans to win enough seats to retain the House?
I tabulated results from the following states: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and North Carolina.* In four of the states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina) there were more ballots cast for Democrat House candidates than Republican House candidates. Yet Republicans won 9 of 14 MI house races, 13 of 18 PA races, 5 of 8 WI races and 9 of 13^ NC races. In Ohio and Virginia the total House vote by party was fairly even (less than a 5 point spread in both) yet the GOP won 12 of 16 OH races and 8 of 11 VA races. In other words, of the 80 House races in these six states Republicans won 56 (70%) and Democrats won 23 (28.75%) with one race undecided.
Republicans control the state legislatures as well as most of the governorships in these states which means the GOP drew the new Congressional districts as a result of the 2010 census. This enabled the GOP to gerrymander the maps to give them the best chances to win. As the table shows, the Republicans did not let that power go to waste.
My comment: I point out these figures not because I think Republicans cheated or acted inappropriately. I am not crying that the system is rigged. I am sure Democrats did the same thing in the states they controlled (Maryland, New York, Illinios, and California immediately jump to mind) to exaggerate their numbers. I write this because I believe the system is flawed. The Democratic party won the Presidential popular vote, they won almost every major Senate toss up and they won more House ballots. To argue that House Republicans have “a mandate” that is on par with the President is sheer madness. The GOP disproportionately benefited from re-districting.
I am not trying to argue that the only reason the Republicans retained the House is due to redistricting. There are plenty of reasons which might explain the results. I am simply suggesting that by counting all House ballots together, as we do in the Presidential popular vote, we would see that the House would be much tighter.
If there is anything to take away from the data above, it is the importance of winning control of the district drawing process. The constitution mandates the government to conduct a census every 10 years and subsequently reapportion House districts to reflect the updated numbers. Strategists, pundits and voters alike should be sure to consider this power when the 2020 election rolls around.
* As I made this table less than one week after the election there are still votes to be counted. Totals are definitely going to change. That being said, the vast majority of votes have been counted and I find it unlikely that the results will change dramatically in any direction.
^ At the time of writing North Carolina’s Seventh district was too close to call. The Democrat candidate was listed as having a 533 vote lead. It is likely this race will go to a re-count.
Osborne Hazel
tacwos 
Of course redistricting matters, and it’s really odd to me that in most states it’s not done by some nonpartisan authority. However, I’m not sure that redistricting overall benefited Republicans. In Illinois, for example, the house delegation went from R11-D8 to R6-D12.
I remember reading the Cook Redistricting Report a few months before the election, which concluded that overall redistricting is not expected to have a big net effect. There are gains for democrats in some states and for republicans in others, but it seems to break about even.
Also, you should be careful from concluding the expected results of house races from the presidential race. After all, the democrats won many senate seats in states where Romney won (MT, ND, MO, IN, WV).
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I tried to be clear that I was not making a grand statement about the re-districting process significantly altering the ultimate makeup of the House. I agree that it is very difficult to say how the results would be different if the districts were drawn by a non-partisan authority. That being said, in my opinion, the results in Illinois are not as damning as the results I have cited.
My “expected results” are extrapolated from the ballots cast in all House races across the States. To be clear, I agree that even this method is not a perfect model for predicting outcomes. But when you consider that the Dems won the Presidential popular vote in all of the examined states except NC, the Dems won all five Senate elections in the states examined that had senate races, and the Dems won a majority of the ballots cast in House races in four of the states and close to 50% in the other two….It is much harder to discount the effect of gerrymandering.
What my tabulation shows is that in four states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin, voters cast more total ballots for Democrat HOUSE candidates than Republican HOUSE candidates. Democrat House candidates in MI, PA, NC and WI received a majority of the votes cast in House races in those 4 states. Those states have 53 House districts. Despite winning a majority of House ballots cast in those 53 districts, Democrats won only 16 seats. Republican candidates, who received less than 50% of all the votes cast in those 53 House districts, won 36 of the races.
To recap: Dems win MORE than 50% of all votes cast in House elections in MI, PA, NC and WI. Dems win 16 of 53 races in those states (30%). Repub candidates win LESS than 50% of all votes cast in House elections in MI, PA, NC and WI. Repubs win 36 of 53 races (68%). In my opinion these FACTS really diminish the GOP claim that they have any kind of authority or mandate.
Of course, this is the system we have and we all have to live with it. I understand it’s not perfect. I’m just saying it is more than screwy for one party to capture more than 50% of the votes cast but yield 30% of the seats.
Bloomberg follows the lead of tacwos: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-19/republicans-win-congress-as-democrats-get-most-votes.html