old article, but: tilted playing field in the House

[© tweed]

link

the GOP took 52% of the House popular vote and 57% of the seats.  the 218th largest margin of victory was 14 points.  meaning the Dems would have had to win the national PV by about 54-45% in order to win 218 seats (presuming no turnout adjustments)

the article notes that this is mathematically equivalent to a pres. candidate winning the national PV by 10 million votes but losing the election.



gotta hand it to those slave-owning tobacco plantation owners back in 1787, they cut one Hell of deal.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Every 10 yrs or so, there is a new census, and the 2010 census, along with the G O P govs that won in the sweep, benefited the G O P.


At the same time, the Dems have managed to keep the senate, at least at parity, while winning the electoral college with the hispanic population in NV and CO.

We will have a chance in 2018 to write the wrongs of the congressional gerrymandering and win a House majority in 2020, but for now, status quo seems to be the consensus.

[Kraxner]

As long as democrats piss off rural folk then unless during unpopular future republican presidents, they probably are going to stay locked out of any house majority for the near future until rural folk+small cities drown out from 19% to >10%.

OR they find out how to get all the states to agree to a constitutional amendment to MMP so allocation of representatives is based on popular vote.

[Vosem]

We will have a chance in 2018 to right the wrongs of the congressional gerrymandering and win a House majority in 2020, but for now, status quo seems to be the consensus.

Even if 2018 is a Democratic gubernatorial and state legislatorial landslide, the next redistricting would be in 2021, and the first elections under new lines would be in 2022, and that Congress will be seated in 2023. (Democrats could try to make new lines earlier, like Republicans did in Texas in 2003 and Georgia in 2005, but that invites backlash, as took place in the Georgia House races in 2006, when the Democrats put in hostile Republican districts all survived).

It should also be noted that because strongly-Democratic areas are more compact and more strongly-Democratic than strongly-Republican areas, the way the House is set up by design favors Republicans, and Republicans would probably have an advantage of a few points (though not 9) with an all-neutral map; Democrats taking the House requires either Democratic gerrymandering, connecting more-populous cities with less-populous rural areas to neutralize the rural areas, or strong Democratic victories, as took place in 2006 and 2008.

I've said my view many times that 1992/1994 was a realignment away from the 1968 Nixonian consensus; and under this alignment, the Presidency is 'naturally' Democratic (Republicans have only won 1 presidential popular vote since then, 2004, which was the one time they had an incumbent running) and Congress is 'naturally' Republican (there have been four years of Democratic House control; while there've been more years of Democratic Senate control, that's because of the ability of Democratic Senate candidates to win in hostile areas, which has been ebbing away starting with 2010). Democrats might briefly control part or all of Congress, and a Republican President might briefly be elected (well, 8 years isn't that brief, but it's still a departure from the norm), but for Republicans to take the Presidency for a lengthy period, or for a Democratic Congress to hold office for a lengthy period, there would have to be another realignment.

2008 was frequently touted as a pro-Democratic realignment, but I think that's not the case; Obama's effect was to entrench the present alignment, make it harder for candidates from a party that is a local minority to win, and exacerbate the differences between presidential and midterm electorates: since Obama's election, all elections except 2012 have been a wave for the party of that electorate, and the only reason 2012 wasn't a wave was because of Republican gerrymandering in 2011 (why deny what's clearly true?) and a bad map for Democrats that opened offense to Republicans after the 2006 landslide.

[IceSpear]

The margin is likely inflated due to the fact that this was a wave, and many seats Democrats would've been contesting in a neutral/Dem year were conceded to the GOP as they began to focus more on defending their own incumbents, leaving the Republicans in those districts room to run up the score. 5-6 points is probably the real margin Dems would need to win the House PV by in order to take it and overcome the gerrymandering. Still a travesty though.

[Kraxner]

We will have a chance in 2018 to right the wrongs of the congressional gerrymandering and win a House majority in 2020, but for now, status quo seems to be the consensus.

Even if 2018 is a Democratic gubernatorial and state legislatorial landslide, the next redistricting would be in 2021, and the first elections under new lines would be in 2022, and that Congress will be seated in 2023. (Democrats could try to make new lines earlier, like Republicans did in Texas in 2003 and Georgia in 2005, but that invites backlash, as took place in the Georgia House races in 2006, when the Democrats put in hostile Republican districts all survived).

It should also be noted that because strongly-Democratic areas are more compact and more strongly-Democratic than strongly-Republican areas, the way the House is set up by design favors Republicans, and Republicans would probably have an advantage of a few points (though not 9) with an all-neutral map; Democrats taking the House requires either Democratic gerrymandering, connecting more-populous cities with less-populous rural areas to neutralize the rural areas, or strong Democratic victories, as took place in 2006 and 2008.

I've said my view many times that 1992/1994 was a realignment away from the 1968 Nixonian consensus; and under this alignment, the Presidency is 'naturally' Democratic (Republicans have only won 1 presidential popular vote since then, 2004, which was the one time they had an incumbent running) and Congress is 'naturally' Republican (there have been four years of Democratic House control; while there've been more years of Democratic Senate control, that's because of the ability of Democratic Senate candidates to win in hostile areas, which has been ebbing away starting with 2010). Democrats might briefly control part or all of Congress, and a Republican President might briefly be elected (well, 8 years isn't that brief, but it's still a departure from the norm), but for Republicans to take the Presidency for a lengthy period, or for a Democratic Congress to hold office for a lengthy period, there would have to be another realignment.

2008 was frequently touted as a pro-Democratic realignment, but I think that's not the case; Obama's effect was to entrench the present alignment, make it harder for candidates from a party that is a local minority to win, and exacerbate the differences between presidential and midterm electorates: since Obama's election, all elections except 2012 have been a wave for the party of that electorate, and the only reason 2012 wasn't a wave was because of Republican gerrymandering in 2011 (why deny what's clearly true?) and a bad map for Democrats that opened offense to Republicans after the 2006 landslide.

Thinking about that 2008 election now, it wasn't an realignment at all but an election that boosted turnout among demographics already favorable to democrats. Plus the drop off in voting from the party that lost(the GOP) was not as bad as predicted, just two million of bush voters either switched or droped out despite Bush's low approval rating and the economic crisis. Compared to 1980 where five million carter voters from 1976 disappeared.





Not only did Obama fail to realign the american political scene towards the left unlike Reagan who was able to make fear of big government ever since as american's biggest concern as well as put drill mainstream fusionist conservatism (social conservatism+economic libertarianism+Patriotism) into the public and weakened the preceding New Deal Realignment that Nixon and Eisenhower had to co-opt to survive.

Democrats also failed to shift concern of big government towards concern of "big business".

[Mr. Reactionary]

gotta hand it to those slave-owning tobacco plantation owners back in 1787, they cut one Hell of deal.

Most of the small states when the Constitution passed weren't really plantation states ... in terms of population, a majority of the smallest states (in order) was 1. Delaware, 2. Rhode Island, 3. Georgia, 4. New Hampshire, 5. Connecticut, 6. South Carolina 7. Maryland

Pretty even balance geographically ... 3 northern, 2 southern, 2 mid-atlantic.

[Vosem]

Also, the current way the House is elected dates back to the Supreme Court mandating the use of single-member districts back in the 1960s; prior to that, it was common for states to elect them all at-large or have districts with radically different populations.