Thursday, January 3, 2013

For Data Freaks

Which includes me - the final (as of yet) 2012 US House Popular Vote totals. In a spreadsheet no less.

The vote in each district is totalled and broken down by party.

As pointed out earlier, Democrats actually got more votes (1,362,351) than Republicans, but Republicans maintained their lead. The reason is argued to be gerrymandering. Republican success in the 2010 election - when they were able to control a large number of state legislatures and dominate the redistricting process following the 2010 census paid dividends. And it will continue to do so through the decade.

One study argues that Democrats would have to outperform Republicans by 7 percentage points in order to take contrrol of the House. This will certainly not happen in 2014, when Republican turnout will - if history continues to be a guide - overwhelm that of Democrats.