Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.
In 2024, as in 2022, Republicans won the aggregated national vote for the House. Their vote share (50.6%) matches their seat share. It was not always thus. Until a few years ago, their seat share was larger than their vote share because the Democratic vote was concentrated in urban areas where Democrats won by huge margins that resulted in wasted votes. But now more Republicans are winning by rubble-bouncing margins, mainly in rural areas.
[C]ontrol of the House came down to only about 7,300 votes. If you were shaking that many hands starting at midnight, you’d be done by about 2 a.m.
This interesting little bit of trivia comes from a social media post by the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman. Republicans will enter the 119th Congress with a 220-215 seat majority. That means that, with a three-seat flip in November, Democrats would have the majority. (220 minus three is 217; 215 plus three is 218. QED.) But thanks to three districts (in Colorado, Iowa and Pennsylvania), Republicans will have control of the chamber.
I was, probably predictably, curious how this could be visualized. So I visualized it, showing the margins in House contests arranged from biggest vote-margin victory for a Democrat to the biggest for a Republican. ... There’s an interesting pattern, as you’ve likely noticed: Republican victory margins jump upward a lot more quickly than do Democratic ones.
