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.

For the majority of pro-American people around the world, Election Day 2004 was a bitter pill to swallow. Just about everyone outside the country could see what a mess Bush was making in Iraq and what damage he was doing to America’s international standing, but the majority of electors voted for him (a narrow majority, but more than he got when falsely presenting himself as “a uniter not a divider” in 2000).

Still, getting things wrong from time to time is part of democracy, and some things are more easily seen from abroad than at home (think of how badly we collectively got it wrong on asylum-seekers in 2001, and how long its taken to achieve even a partial reversal of those policies). As Tuesday’s election results have shown, most Americans have come to the same view of Bush and his war as most people everywhere else in the world.

I’m watching the US election results with particular impatience, as I’ve agreed to do a piece for the Fin on implications for Australia, which are hard to figure out until we actually see the results.

My general desire for an overwhelming Democrat win is in line with personal self-interest. For the last two presidential elections, I’ve had to write three different pieces covering a win for either side or “too close to call by deadline time”. I really don’t want to do that again.

So far things look good for the Democrats. Leaked exit polls, for what they’re worth, show leads in most key races, and the early counting has confirmed some gains in the House, Senate and state governorships.

Update 1:40 I’m going to get in early and call a win for the Dems in the House. They’ve gained around nine seats already (no losses at all so far), and only need to hold onto leads to pick up the six more they need.

Update 3:15 It looks like the Dems will gain about 30 seats, which also means a majority of 30. The odds are still against a win in the Senate, but the size of the loss will make it hard for the Republicans to hang on next time around.

A big winner out of all this is John McCain. The Republican establishment will have their work cut out to stop him getting the nomination now, especially if they put up a member of Team Bush.

There can be few people on the planet more deserving of death than Saddam Hussein. However, the crime for which he has just been sentenced to die was, by his standards, relatively minor. Following an assassination attempt attributed to terrorists and traitors, his regime responded with indiscriminate arrests. Those seized were held incommunicado in secret prisons, tortured (in some cases to death) and then, in many cases, executed after trials by special tribunals set up to secure convictions where normal courts would not.

If the precedent set by this case is applied consistently, we can expect to see many more death sentences arising from events in Iraq and elsewhere, and not just among the remnants of the Baathist regime.