Comments on: Spurious majorities in the US House in Comparative Perspective

By: Ross Trusler

Ross Trusler — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:05:46 +0000

Thanks for that Ed. But what we’re looking for (in the chart) are not national aggregates, but distribution of vote shares in each district, vote efficiency, etc.

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 01:07:53 +0000

I usually go to Wikipedia for the most authoritative updates for election data, assuming that the data will eventually wind up being derived from the most authoritative underlying source. Their posted figures for the US House of Representatives elections for 2012, as of January 6th, 2013, are derived from a Cook Political Report article that itself is dated to December 4th, 2012 (while I discuss the presidential race in this post, the Cook Political Report is used as a source for the House popular vote only, Cook also seems to be the source for 2008 as well).

There has been similar work done on the partisan Democrat but wonkish website Daily Kos Elections that may well be more accurate, but it is in line with the Cook Political Report figures.

Anyway, the Wikipedia article shows the Democrats accruing 49.2% of the vote, about 59 million votes, for a total of 201 seats; and the Republicans accruing 48% of the vote, about 58 million votes, for a total of 234 seats. They report a swing to Democratic House candidates of 3.9% from 2010. Democrats in nationwide aggregate ran 2% behind Obama and Republican house candidates in aggregate ran 0.8% ahead of Romney.

Compared to the 2008 House of Representatives elections, the last one to coincide to a presidential election, there was a swing of 4.7% to the Republicans in 2012. In 2008 the Democrats won 257 seats and the Republicans 178. Democrats that year ran in nationwide aggregate exactly even with Obama, and Republicans ran 2.3% behind McCain.

On the presidential race, Obama seems to have polled about three million fewer votes in 2012 than in 2008, and Romney polled just over a million fewer votes than McCain, as turnout declined from 61.6% to 58.2%. There was a 1.7% swing against Obama. Fringe or minor party candidates increased their share of the vote by 0.4%. The strongest 2012 minor party candidate, former governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson, barely missed breaking the 1% barrier.

These appear to be the most up to date figures.

By: MSS

MSS — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 19:32:37 +0000

I am not even sure we have final data on US House contests yet, but if someone has seen it, please direct me to it.

No promises on being able to do the graphical analysis, given all that is on my plate now. It would depend on how much cleaning and organizing the data required before I could run the commands.

By: Ross Trusler

Ross Trusler — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 04:36:06 +0000

So, we can see the 2012 curves yet?

It’s 2013, so presumably all recounts are done and the new bums are about to be seated?

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 18:08:05 +0000

I meant 2012. I was tired when I typed the earlier comment.

Anyway, the numbers shift depending on how you account for uncontested races, but its clear that in 2012 the Democrats at least won a plurality of the popular vote.

By: Vasi

Vasi — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:20:51 +0000

Uh, Ed, didn’t the Democrats win the house in 2008?

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:20:09 +0000

Daily Kos Elections, a site which does number crunching pretty well, reports that the Democrats took 50.5% of the aggregate popular vote for the House of Representatives in ~~2008~~ 2012, but 46% of the seats. So the result was a spurious majority. They are saying that the only other such instance in American history was in 1996.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:17:43 +0000

How have the current numbers been treating California, which just adopted Louisiana-style jungle primaries but obviously at 52 districts rather than 6 has a much bigger influence on the total?

By: MSS

MSS — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:11:30 +0000

Was 1996 a spurious majority in the US House?

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 21:50:18 +0000

Even in Australia, where gerrymandering is only a bad memory and incumbents have very limited input, single-member districts produce weird results at the state level.

The 2010 federal election returned 21 Coalition, 8 Labor and 1 Independent. The 2PP was 55.14/44.86 in Queensland.

At the same election, for half the Senate, where each state is a single electorate under STV, Queensland returned 3 Coalition, 2 Labor, 1 Green.

The same electors, voting on the same day and the same issues.