[EL] 2012 first time since 1952 when US House popular vote majority ends up as minority

[Scott Rafferty]

The seminal article on the relationship between seats and votes was written
by Ed Tufte in 1973.   Using a logit model, he defined swing (low is
nonresponsive) and bias (50%-the percentage required to elect a majority).
 Bias and swing are relevant even when majority vote party gets over 50% of
the seats.

Looking at rolling averages over the three most recent elections, Tufte
found that biased jumped from 3% pro-D to 8% pro-D and swing fell from 1.6
to 0.7 between 1960-64 and 1966-70.   I suspect that end of the Democratic
South moderated the 8% pro-D bias.
Tufte identified, I believe correctly, incumbent protection in
redistricting as the culprit and proposed computer modeling of districts to
eliminate bias and increase responsiveness.
He also suggested that bias was greater in state legislatures.  In New
Jersey, for example, the Democratic Party often won 60% of the statewide
vote, but only 33% of the seats.

The California top-two primary has little effect on the national bias, but
it seems to have added some swing by reducing incumbent protection.   Only
one of the single-party districts would have been contestable absent
top-two.  Statewide, the "net suppressed vote" for the party with no
candidate was not great.   5 of the 6 two-Democratic seats had no
Republican candidate even in the primary, so there would have been no
Republican votes in any event.   In the CD-30 district, the primary vote
for all Republicans was 21%, while the Democratic vote was 48% in CD-31 and
21% in CD-8.   It's almost an exact wash, so the unreported 25% of the
California vote won't change the analysis much either.


Scott Rafferty
1913 Whitecliff Ct
Walnut Creek CA
 mobile 202-380-5525



On 12 November 2012 11:25, Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.ballot-access.org/2012/11/12/only-four-u-s-house-elections-in-the-last-hundred-years-gave-one-party-a-house-majority-even-though-the-other-major-party-polled-more-votes-for-u-s-house/
>
> Richard Winger
> 415-922-9779
> PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
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> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
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