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