Democratic House candidates winning the popular vote, despite big GOP majority

[onehandle]

Democratic House candidates appear to have won more of the popular vote than their Republican counterparts on Tuesday, despite what looks as though it will be a 35-seat GOP majority.

According to numbers compiled by the Post’s great Dan Keating, Democrats have won roughly 48.8 percent of the House vote, compared to 48.47 percent for Republicans.

Despite losing the popular vote, Republicans are set to have their second-biggest House majority in 60 years and their third-biggest since the Great Depression.

The numbers seem to back up what we’ve been talking about on this blog for a while: Redistricting drew such a GOP-friendly map that, in a neutral environment, Republicans have an inherent advantage.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/11/09/democratic-house-candidates-winning-the-popular-vote-despite-big-gop-majority

Once again, thanks lazy voters of 2010 and lazy downballot voters of 2012.

[Kber]

1. That's really uncool.

That's what the Senate is for.

[Daniel537]

2. Unfair to broad-brush our voters like that.

The big reason for the GOP keeping the House is gerry-mandering, until we start taking over more state legislatures this is going to be a big problem. The fact that we won the popular vote proves that most of our voters were not "lazy". But we do need to get them to vote at higher numbers during midterms, where turnout is always lower.

[katmondoo]

3. Even though we did not win the House

I think we gained with a few new members that are strong Democrats and the lose of a few wacko,s. The same for the Senate. The Senate will become even better with more women and some very smart newcomers in January.

[caraher]

4. And this is why people hate Congress and love their representatives

I wonder what we would lose if we did away with congressional districts. For instance, suppose we had a state with 5 representatives, let each party field up to 5 candidates, and put in office the five who garnered the most votes. The biggest problems I see would be the challenge of providing constituent service and a possible edge to candidates who are better-connected withing the larger media markets in a given state.

Alternatively, I'd love to see a some kind of algorithm employed to draw up districts that, in an automated fashion, carves up states into approximately equal-population chunks that are as compact in some mathematical sense as possible, given population density. Although one could argue that the political redistricting process lends stability to government by rewarding past political success, I think the rewards are too large and take too great a toll on the competing value of democracy - at least the way it's done today.

[ladjf]

5. If Obama does a good job for the next two years, the Dems will make good progress

on elected more Representatives in 2012 and 2014. Then we can readjust the district
boundaries.

[pampango]

6. Needs to be publicized when republicans talk about their retention of the House as an endorsement

of their policies.

More states need to put redistricting in nonpartisan hands.