Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
I was waiting to see some hard numbers, and they're finally making their way out. Looks like the House Dems actually got more votes than the House Repubs, but due to the power of gerymandering redistricting, the Repubs maintained control. Whether you love or oppose the House Repubs, this is fairly obviously something that needs addressing.

Details.

The Washington Post’s Dan Keating did the work and found that Democrats got 54,301,095 votes while Republicans got 53,822,442. That’s a close election — 48.8%-48.5% –but it’s still a popular vote win for the Democrats. Those precise numbers might change a bit as the count finalizes, but the tally isn’t likely to flip.

What saved Boehner’s majority wasn’t the will of the people but the power of redistricting. As my colleague Dylan Matthews showed, Republicans used their control over the redistricting process to great effect, packing Democrats into tighter and tighter districts and managing to restructure races so even a slight loss for Republicans in the popular vote still meant a healthy majority in the House.

In deed turnout can vary from state to state and district to district. This is a small margin and could be accounted for in that regard. Voting districts within a state have to be the same approximate size. It is also a matter of small states having a congressman.

If Wyoming having a congress person upsets you then you need to get Congress to up the number of seats. They imposed the seat limit 1929. They can change the law to a larger number than 435.

Blaming apportionment on a political party controlling Congress also shows that the persons making that charge are ignorant of the facts. Apportionment is based on the census. Then it is up to each gaining or losing state to redistrict. The political party at the state level is where you look for gerrymandering.