Does anyone know the total popular vote for the House?

[Stinky The Clown]

Yes, the repubicans won the House, thanks to gerrymandering.

But what was the total number who voted for them and what was the total number who voted Democratic?

[Lasher]

1. Yes.

53,952,240 votes were cast for Democratic candidates in the House. 53,402,643 were cast for Republicans. Good OP on the subject here.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. That's very out of date

It doesn't include all the votes counted in the weeks after that (provisional, etc.)

The link in #3 is more up to date, but even that has not put a 'final' mark against many of the results. It's also what Wikipedia is using for its page giving the popular vote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012

Dem: 59,262,059 Rep: 58,105,500

[Lasher]

5. Thanks.

I knew the numbers were a month old, as was evident in the OP that I linked. It's always best to have the latest statistics. But I don't see much change, relatively speaking.



Something else I've noticed: The author of that OP (lesgensvontgagner) has been banned by the MIRT. Based on the quality of that contribution, and on lesgensvontgagner's last post, I'm not sure MIRT made the right call.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. It isn't just gerrymandering.

Right now republicans are winning lots of split districts and democrats are winning lots of lopsided urban districts. We pile up the votes, but not the reps, they pile up the reps, but not the votes. Some of that is the misfortune of losing so many state legislatures in 2010, just in time for redistricting based on the 2010 census, but a lot of it is the demographics of the urban rural cultural divide.

[ieoeja]

6. You just described party gerrymandering.

An individual might want to gerrymander a district strong enough to give him a huge win. But a party wanting more seats gerrymanders districts to give them narrower wins while segregating their opponents as much as possible.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. No. A gerrymandered district is one that has been specifically drawn to

produce a desired outcome. What I am describing is a large number of non-gerrymandered districts that are overwhelmingly Democratic. They haven't been drawn to capture all the Democratic votes in the region, all the voters in the region are Democrats. Most large cities in this country, for example, fall into this category. They have representative districts that are just naturally lopsided Democrat.

[ieoeja]

8. Illinois redrew districts to merge regions of Chicago with the suburbs and outlying areas.

We did it for the specific purpose of breaking up majority Republican districts.

Had Republicans controlled Illinois they would have made "all Chicago" districts instead of a mix to isolate the Democrats and give Republicans a majority in the suburbs and outlying regions. This is what you are describing. And it *is* designed to produce a desired outcome.

The real irony is that suburbanites hate country people, yet country people keep electing suburbanite Republicans. I grew up on a farm in southern Indiana. My first two years in the Chicago area, I lived in the suburbs and got the "stupid hillbilly" treatment. Then I moved into the city and found I did not run into that problem. So far as the city is concerned "hillbilly" is just one more ethnic group.

And more welcome than most since we almost speak English.

In many ways city and country residents are more alike than either are like suburbanites.

[Tx4obama]

3. Here's a link with ALL the House numbers

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjYj9mXElO_QdHZCbzJocGtxYkR6OTdZbzZwRUFvS3c#gid=0

Totals for the House popular vote are located at the top of the chart.