Sunday, November 11, 2012

US House Gerrymandering

Wikipedia notes that the Republicans in the US House have a majority of seats in the 2012 Congress, despite having received a smaller number of votes than the Democrats, and that this is the first time this has happened since 1996.  So I have investigated the history. I built up a little spreadsheet to see how long this pattern has been going on.  The numbers come from Wikipedia, modified slightly to assign 7 undecided races to the way they are leaning now. 

 
Year Votes Rep. Seats Rep. Votes/Seat Rep. Votes Dem. Seats Dem. Votes/Seat Dem. Votes/Seat(Dem) / Votes/Seat(Rep)








1986 26,384,083 177 149,063 32,338,342 258 125,342 0.841
1988 37,015,851 175 211,519 43,473,080 260 167,204 0.790
1990 27,402,036 167 164,084 32,397,732 267 121,340 0.739
1992 43,498,015 176 247,148 48,550,096 258 188,179 0.761
1994 36,325,809 230 157,938 31,542,823 204 154,622 0.979
1996 43,120,872 228 189,127 43,393,580 206 210,648 1.114
1998 31,983,612 223 143,424 31,391,834 211 148,776 1.037
2000 46,750,175 221 211,539 46,411,559 212 218,922 1.035
2002 37,091,270 229 161,971 33,642,142 204 164,912 1.018
2004 55,713,412 232 240,144 52,745,121 202 261,114 1.087
2006 35,674,808 202 176,608 42,082,311 233 180,611 1.023
2008 51,952,981 178 291,871 64,888,090 257 252,483 0.865
2010 44,593,666 242 184,271 38,854,459 193 201,318 1.093
2012 53,822,442 235 229,032 54,301,095 200 271,505 1.185