Posted on August 8, 2017 by John Hinderaker
The Democrats’ Electoral Disadvantage Is Getting Worse
At FiveThirtyEight, David Wasserman has a heartwarming analysis of why the Democratic Party is pretty much hosed in Congressional elections for the foreseeable future:
Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points — a pretty good midterm by historical standards — they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats.
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In the last few decades, Democrats have expanded their advantages in California and New York — states with huge urban centers that combined to give Clinton a 6 million vote edge, more than twice her national margin. But those two states elect only 4 percent of the Senate. Meanwhile, Republicans have made huge advances in small rural states — think Arkansas, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia — that wield disproportionate power in the upper chamber compared to their populations.
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In 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, but Republicans won the median House seat by 3.4 points and the median Senate seat by 3.6 points — that’s the widest Senate gap in at least a century and tied with 2012 for the widest House disparity in the last half-century.
more
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/08/the-democrats-electoral-disadvantage-is-getting-worse.php
