Americans know that the Democrats scored big victories in re-electing President Obama to another four years in the White House, and in increasing their majority in the Senate. What is less known is that Democrats also got more votes than Republicans in elections for the House of Representatives. Immediately after the election, it was reported that Democrats had gotten about half a million more votes than Republicans in House elections.But now all the votes have been counted, and the Democratic lead has grown substantially. Democratic House candidates got 59,343,447 votes, while Republican candidates got 58,178,393 -- giving the House Democratic candidates an edge of 1,165,054 votes. That means Democrats got 50.5% of the total vote, and Republicans got 49.5%.
Looking at those percentages, one might think the House members would be pretty evenly divided between the two parties. But that is not the case. The Republicans have 234 House members, and the Democrats have 201 House members -- giving the Republicans 53.79% of House members, and the Democrats 46.21%.
This shows how valuable the Republican victory in 2010 was. They were able to gerrymander new House District lines in many states after the last census. This gave them the ability to hang on to a majority in the House, even though they didn't get as many votes as the Democrats did. It just proves that gerrymandering is a valuable tool when you can get away with it -- and it can allow a minority party to retain some power they probably shouldn't have.
