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7 votes
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7 votes -
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29 votes -
The decline of the low countries
7 votes -
Thailand elects first transgender member of parliament
10 votes -
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6 votes -
NSW election delivers Liberal win, Gladys Berejiklian becomes first elected female Premier of NSW
7 votes -
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8 votes -
Bernie Sanders' staff unionizes in US presidential campaign first
17 votes -
Colorado signs on to popular vote bill that could one day change presidential elections
8 votes -
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5 votes -
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6 votes -
Israeli electoral committee bans Arab candidates, allows extreme right to run
12 votes -
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7 votes -
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10 votes -
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22 votes -
Colorado governor will sign bill aimed at bypassing electoral college
12 votes -
After stinging Presidential loss, Popular Vote Movement gains momentum in states
21 votes -
In North Carolina, investigators find ballot ‘scheme’ in House race
11 votes -
A TV actor who played Ukraine's president could now become the actual president
8 votes -
Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) urges Muslims to cast votes and avoid "golput"
6 votes -
Nigeria presidential election postponed by a week
5 votes -
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5 votes -
Spain: Will a snap election spell the end for Pedro Sanchez?
6 votes -
National Popular Vote bill passes Colorado State Senate
27 votes -
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7 votes -
Thai Princess Ubolratana Mahidol running to be Prime Minister against military candidate
6 votes -
Zanu-PF wins majority in Zimbabwe parliament elections, officials say
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Australia recognises Juan Guaidó as Venezuela president
6 votes -
Fake news is more likely to be shared by older people — but we don't know why
19 votes -
A basic analysis of the 2018 US midterm elections suggests it was less gerrymandered than other recent elections for the House of representatives
Now that the ballots for the 2018 House of representatives election have been counted, how badly was the vote gerrymandered? Gerrymandering is the creating of political districts to maximize the...
Now that the ballots for the 2018 House of representatives election have been counted, how badly was the vote gerrymandered?
Gerrymandering is the creating of political districts to maximize the number of representatives a political grouping gets per vote.
The degree of gerrymandering can be approximated by calculating the difference between the outcome of a proportional voting system and the actual districted representatives each party gains.
Here's a look at the last 5 elections to the House of representatives.
In this congress, the Democrats have 235 representatives, the Republicans have 199 and there's 1 other representative.
Voter turnout was 50,3%, the highest for a midterm election since 1914.
The Democrats got 53,5% of the popular vote and 54,0% of the seats. The Republicans got 44,8% of the vote and 46,0% of the seats. Others got 1,8% of the vote and a single seat.
Since the Republicans are no longer getting vastly outsized representation, is gerrymandering dead?
If the US would have had a proportional voting system, 7 of the 435 seats would have been distributed differently in 2018.
The Democrats would have had 3 fewer representatives, the Republicans would have had 4 fewer and others would have had those 7 seats.
Here are the similar figures for the last five elections.
Year Votes per seat ('000) Dem diff. Rep diff. Other diff. 2010 199 -3 +18 -15 2012 281 -11 +27 -16 2014 179 -10 +24 -14 2016 295 -15 +27 -12 2018 261 +3 +4 -7 The change from getting 27 seats "wrong" in 2016 to 7 seats "wrong" this year is large and changes the historic trend.
Turns out that higher turnout led to more accurate representation in 2018. Who would have guessed.
(There are many other additional possible explanations for why this has changed too)
If we just look at the two major parties, what does this mean in real terms?
Here's an overview of the average difference in the number of voters the Democrats have needed for each seat they actually got in the last five elections compared to the Republicans.
Year Additional Dem voters for a seat 2010 8,6% 2012 19,4% 2014 16,6% 2016 21,4% 2018 0,8% There are other ways of trying to engineer specific election results.
This basic overview only looks at people who actually vote. Therefore it obviously doesn't consider those who are prevented from voting in the election process, whether that's from voting requirements, accessibility of polling places, registration requirements, etc.
It will be interesting to see what happens in 2020.
Is this a trend that'll continue?
Is it just a blip because those gerrymandering haven't been able to predict what party voters vote for in today's political climate?
What about turnout?
15 votes -
'It's going to be chaos': Thais to vote in February for first time in eight years
6 votes -
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2 votes -
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13 votes -
Over a thousand absentee ballots possibly destroyed in controversial North Carolina House race
25 votes -
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25 votes -
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15 votes -
Taiwan ruling party suffers major defeat in local elections
9 votes -
Thousands of Cuban doctors leave Brazil after Bolsonaro's win
12 votes -
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8 votes -
Fiji election: Bainimarama returned as PM in slim victory
5 votes -
'A cancer on democracy': The battle to end gerrymandering in America
6 votes -
11,000 votes may be missing in Florida Congressional race
13 votes -
IRA troll factory employee sent by Russia to oversee US midterms appears to violate election laws
8 votes -
Sri Lanka president seeks fresh no-confidence motion against new PM
3 votes -
Despite losing House, Trump declares ‘big victory’
15 votes -
Gillum-DeSantis race for Florida governor now in recount range
14 votes