Does Legislative Representation Properly Represent the Votes of the Electorate? (Part 2)

Last week I looked at how the results of the November 6 election were reflected in party affiliation of the candidates elected to the House of Representatives. Today, I want to continue in that same theme, but with a different state: Pennsylvania. Why Pennsylvania, you ask? I think that the answer will become self-obvious as I get a bit deeper into the analysis. Just remember that the question is whether Congressional representation properly represents the will of the people as reflected by the votes that were cast.

Note that all of the vote total information in this post comes from the website of the Pennsylvania Department of State (as of November 12, 2012).

Before diving into the Pennsylvania races for the House of Representatives, let’s first take a brief look at how the vote totals broke down for the statewide contents in Pennsylvania (minor parties omitted):

President	Mitt Romney (R)	2,595,174	46.8%
	Barack Obama (D)	2,887,221	52.0%
Senate	Tom Smith (R)	2,430,995	44.6%
	Bob Casey (D)	2,921,798	53.7%
Attorney General	David Freed (R)	2,241,524	41.6%
	Kathleen Kane (D)	3,027,541	56.1%
Auditor General	John Maher (R)	2,469,766	46.5%
	Eugene Depasquale (D)	2,643,072	49.7%
State Treasurer	Diana Vaughan (R)	2,330,049	44.0%
	Robert McCord (D)	2,782,891	52.6%

Democratic candidates won every statewide race and only one of those had a margin of less than 5 points (Auditor General).

So, knowing nothing else, what would you predict for the breakdown of Pennsylvania’s 18 seats in the House of Representatives? A little “back of the napkin” math, working from a presumed vote spread of about 52% for the Democratic candidates (rounded up), would suggested that Democrats should have won 9 or 10 of those 18 seats.

But here is the reality:

1st CD	John Featherman (R)	39,752	15.0%
	Robert Brady (D)	226,189	85.1%
2nd CD	Robert Mansfield, Jr. (R)	31,668	9.4%
	Chaka Fattah (D)	302,746	89.4%
3rd CD	Mike Kelly (R)	159,630	54.7%
	MIssa Eaton (D)	119,905	41.1%
4th CD	Scott Perry (R)	179,340	59.7%
	Harry Perkinson (D)	103,387	34.4%
5th CD	Glenn Thompson (R)	172,616	62.9%
	Charles Duman (D)	101,866	37.1%
6th CD	Jim Gerlach (R)	187,008	57.1%
	Manan Trivedi (D)	140,659	42.9%
7th CD	Patrick Meehan (R)	203,977	59.5%
	George Badey (D)	139,067	40.5%
8th CD	Mike Fitzpatrick (R)	199,283	56.7%
	Kathy Boockvar (D)	152,515	43.4%
9th CD	Bill Shuster (R)	165,992	61.6%
	Karen Rambsburg (D)	103,338	38.4%
10th CD	Thomas Marino (R)	168,745	65.9%
	Philip Scollo (D)	87,449	34.1%
11th CD	Lou Barletta (R)	163,733	58.5%
	Gene Stilip (D)	116,315	41.5%
12th CD	Keith Rothfus (R)	167,396	51.5%
	Mark Critz (D)	157,364	48.5%
13th CD	Joseph Rooney (R)	92,415	31.0%
	Allyson Schwartz (D)	205,287	69.0%
14th CD	Hans Lessman (R)	71,805	23.1%
	Mike Doyle (D)	239,656	77.0%
15th CD	Charles Dent (R)	161,231	56.6%
	Rick Daugherty (D)	123,735	43.4%
16th CD	Joseph Pitts (R)	154,337	55.0%
	Aryanna Strader (D)	109,026	38.9%
17th CD	Laureen Cummings (R)	103,319	39.5%
	Matthew Cartwright (D)	158,422	60.5%
18th CD	Tim Murphy (R)	204,784	63.8%
	Larry Maggi (D)	115,975	36.2%

Some observations (I did the math so you don’t have to):

• Democrats won just 5 of the 18 seats (with Republicans, obviously, winning the other 13).
• The total number of votes cast in House races was very similar to the total number of votes cast in the other statewide races.
• The lowest winning percentage by a Democrat was 60.5%; the others received 69%, 77%, 85.1%, and 89.4% of the votes cast in their districts.
• By contrast, only four winning Republicans received at least 60% of the vote (65.9% being the highest).
• But here is the amazing statistic: The Democratic candidates received 2,702,901 total votes; the Republicans received 2,627,010 votes. Yes, those numbers are correct. Read them again.
• In other words, the Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives received 50.71% of all votes cast compared to just 49.29% for the Republicans. And yet the Republicans won 13 of 18 races.

Now think about those results for a moment. Democrats won every statewide race, with around 52% of the vote. But they lost 13 of 18 House races, even though they earned nearly 51% of the vote.

Would it surprise you if I told you that for the 2010 redistricting, Pennsylvania’s legislature was controlled by Republicans with a Republican governor? The online journal Real Clear Politics labeled the job that Pennsylvania’s legislature did “the Gerrymander of the Decade”.

Now I’m not suggesting that only Republicans engage in gerrymandering for political purposes. Both sides do it, though I do suspect that an analysis would show that Republicans either do it more or at least more effectively.

In any event, the ability of state legislatures to draw lines that serve not to give voice to the broadest segment of the population, but rather, to insure electoral victories for the chosen party, is a real problem in the overall fairness of our legislative process.