World Events

How many votes ?

John Quiggin13 Comments

A couple of questions, one substantive and one rhetorical

1. What share of the aggregate popular vote did the two major parties receive in the US House elections ?

2. Why isn’t this reported anywhere (at least anywhere I can see) ?

As regards 2, I know that the aggregate popular vote doesn’t determine anything, but that’s true in all constituency systems and for indirect elections like the US Presidential elections, and the popular vote is generally reported in these cases. Also, I know there were some uncontested seats, but there are usually ways to adjust for this kind of problem.

Update Andrew Gelman writes:

Regarding your blog question on votes, you might be interested in our post-election summary here:

The short story is that the Democrats did much better in 2006 (56% of the average district vote) than the Republicans did in 1994 (when they only received 51.3%). In terms of national voting, the Democrats received much more of a mandate in 2006 than the Republicans did twelve years earlier. Our graph is helpful too, I think, both in showing this pattern and putting it into a longer historical context.

I’ve seen a range of estimates of the Democrats’ share of the two-party vote, from 53 to 57, but I’ve generally been impressed with Gelman and his cobloggers, so I’ll take this as the best estimate.

I still wonder that US national media don’t care about this. Even the exit polls reported by the NYT, which had all sorts of breakdowns, didn’t make it easy to get the aggregate result.

Further update Andrew Gelman has written again to advise that a more detailed recalculation produces an estimate of 54.8 per cent.

13 thoughts on “How many votes ?”

  1. Brad Delong has some Senate numbers: (D) 32,100,000 (R) 24,524,000

    Which are extended to the last three elections by commenter Mo

    Here are the totals for the complete Senate, using Brad’s numbers for last night:

    Dem/Rep:
    21,428,784 18,665,605 02
    37,645,909 38,164,089 04
    32,100,000 24,524,000 06

    Total:
    91,174,693 81,353,694

    Call it a ten-million seat majority.

    http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal/~3/46751825/democratic_sena.html

  3. Forget gerrymandering, that is a third order issue in the US. The first is the undemocratic electoral systems used, the second is how the votes are recorded and counted and gerrymandering is a distant third.

    The greatest democracy on Earth is not the greatest democracy on Earth, but nothing will change until Americans realise this. Conversation should now shift to how we can help them to wake up to themselves. My guess is that something dramatic and over the top like flying planes into a tall building will grab their attention but will be counter productive.

  4. Given the reports of alleged errors arising from the diebold machines used during the last election the numbers for this election may be in question.

  5. But of coarse the Gerrymander would be an invention of the US political system. I’m sure just about every trick in the book have been used in elections in the US.

    I remember in 2003, while arguing on a netnews group, that many ring-wing proponents had a link (in their signatures) to a site contain a map of the US with red colour showing the electorates that voted Republican and blue the Democrats (as is now the standard). The image had a title of “The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”, and was attempting to suggest that Dubya won the 2000 election fair and square. But area does not measure the number of people.

    The map immediately reminded me of how a Gerrymander was described to me in school, not long after Joh had been dismissed from his 19 year reign. Sparsely populated rural electorates voting one way and densely populated urban the other.

    The real problem in Australia is that we are overly urbanised. Government policy has encouraged it, especially Liberal party policy. And the Liberals wonder why the states are under Labor control. Maybe it’s got something to do with the pointy head policy of “economies of scale”.

  7. John Quiggin,
    If you go to the NYTimes election site, they have national vote figures for the senate and house broken down by various demographic measures.

    Benno:
    “Conversation should now shift to how we can help them to wake up to themselves.”

    ???

    I’m sensing that you’re a big hit with the ladies.

  8. Why isn’t this reported anywhere (at least anywhere I can see) ?

    I doubt the aggregate votes of Australian Federal Elections are reported in the New Zealand press.

  9. The Senate vote totals are not really represenative of too much, because only a third of senate seats are up in any given election, so there can be a concentration of contests in states that traditionally favor one or other of the parties. In fact, there were more Senate races in traditionally Democratic states this year than Republican. The House of Representative vote is more significant because every seat is up every election.

    Kevin Drum’s blog gives the following totals for the House:

    Democrats 40.2 million 53.7%

    Republicans 34.6 million 46.3%

  11. Are we advocating proportional representation here? That is a bit far fetched for the USA. They cannot even understand preferential voting, let alone a system that is proportional to number of votes received.

  12. I doubt the aggregate votes of Australian Federal Elections are reported in the New Zealand press.

    Kieran I think JQ was referring to being unable to find national vote figures anywhere at all ie on US media sites.

  13. i think that younger people like i myself should be able to vote i mean some people take this seriouse

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