Democrats may never win back the House

GOP control of state legislatures has, essentially, locked Democrats out of the House of Representatives. It's not as simple as gerrymandering, but also that the population is avoiding areas where their ideology doesn't match. Meaning, more liberal people are moving to more liberal areas in their respective states.

CHART: Why The House Is A Fortress Dems Can't Win

Democratic House candidates in Pennsylvania and Michigan won more votes overall in 2012 but in each state the party ended up with fewer seats than the GOP. In Ohio, Republicans garnered more votes overall in 2012 and 2014; in each year, their percentage of seats won was vastly higher than their share of the vote.

Gerrymandering the districts certainly helps though;

Why Democrats can't win back the House

In 2012, congressional district lines were redrawn, as is constitutionally required every 10 years, based on population shifts. Republicans had the upper hand in many states after the GOP won control of governorships and state legislatures following the 2010 Tea Party wave. The end result has been a precipitous drop in the number of competitive seats and a rise in the number of seats considered so safely Republican or Democratic that they are unlikely to ever switch party control.

This last link has lots of nice charts you can look at with some added information that's keeping Democrats from winning the house:
Why Democrats Can’t Win the House

Even so, “by far the most important factor contributing to the Republican advantage,” Mr. Chen says, “is the natural geographic factor of Democrats’ being overwhelmingly concentrated in these urban districts, especially in states like Michigan and Florida.”

The short of it is that Democrats are holding fewer districts because the concentration of those districts is so high. Democrats would not only have to greatly expand their base, shifting the party platform farther to the right, but they'll have to overcome the districts that were drawn by the Tea Party majorities in 2012.

When it comes to 2016, 2018 and so on...expect the GOP to hold the house. Not because they're necessarily better or more liked, but because the districts are composed in such a way as to keep them in power.

a reply to: links234

And that's okay, because it is going to cause a rift in the GOP. We already see that happening as the Tea Party continues to try to remain relevant. Could the Tea Party use the House to become an independent Third Party that splits conservative voters?

Yup.

I've been warning about the compartmentalized Democrat voting pockets for a year already.

The U.S. Constitution is a real knee-slapper ain't it.

I wonder if there is any population imbalances in the Congressional districts?



Adding the Big Red Map

Warning: wear sun glasses !!

originally posted by: AgentShillington
a reply to: links234

And that's okay, because it is going to cause a rift in the GOP. We already see that happening as the Tea Party continues to try to remain relevant. Could the Tea Party use the House to become an independent Third Party that splits conservative voters?

Yup.

The Conservatives in the U.K are being ripped open by UKIP and there will be more Conservative defectors as the Election approaches in May. The trouble with that is that it probably favours Labour in the long run.

If the GOP split before the next election, you would probably be saying the same thing, albeit favouring the Democrats. I can't see the Tea Party parting company if they have a chance of winning the next election.

If they do however, you would have to question the reasoning. What would be the motives for allowing the Democrats back in?

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978

originally posted by: AgentShillington
a reply to: links234

And that's okay, because it is going to cause a rift in the GOP. We already see that happening as the Tea Party continues to try to remain relevant. Could the Tea Party use the House to become an independent Third Party that splits conservative voters?

Yup.

The Conservatives in the U.K are being ripped open by UKIP and there will be more Conservative defectors as the Election approaches in May. The trouble with that is that it probably favours Labour in the long run.

If the GOP split before the next election, you would probably be saying the same thing, albeit favouring the Democrats. I can't see the Tea Party parting company if they have a chance of winning the next election.

If they do however, you would have to question the reasoning. What would be the motives for allowing the Democrats back in?

No, this isn't a short term scenario.

Dems win in the Presidency in 2016.
Dems win the Senate back in 2016.
GOP keeps the house, though they are going to lose a more than they win.

We are talking 10 years. When Hillary is termed out of the Presidency, the Teabaggers will be ready to try to overtake the GOP, and when that doesn't happen, they will announce their separation from the GOP.

Yeah they will.

You can count on it.

And if they get anmensty passed.

They will never lose another election.

Between the Hispanic vote.

The African American vote.

The Asian vote.

And the self hating whites in Democratic party who pander to minorities to 'prove' to themselves they 'aren't' racists.

And if that isn't a slap in the face already.

They have the rest of the identity politic arsenal.

Piting men agianst women.

Straights against gays.

Rich against poor.

And just pays lip service to the middle class.

Just like they said the republicans are dead. They aren't they may be down, but not out.

That applies to both.

originally posted by: AgentShillington

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978

originally posted by: AgentShillington
a reply to: links234

And that's okay, because it is going to cause a rift in the GOP. We already see that happening as the Tea Party continues to try to remain relevant. Could the Tea Party use the House to become an independent Third Party that splits conservative voters?

Yup.

The Conservatives in the U.K are being ripped open by UKIP and there will be more Conservative defectors as the Election approaches in May. The trouble with that is that it probably favours Labour in the long run.

If the GOP split before the next election, you would probably be saying the same thing, albeit favouring the Democrats. I can't see the Tea Party parting company if they have a chance of winning the next election.

If they do however, you would have to question the reasoning. What would be the motives for allowing the Democrats back in?

No, this isn't a short term scenario.

Dems win in the Presidency in 2016.
Dems win the Senate back in 2016.
GOP keeps the house, though they are going to lose a more than they win.

We are talking 10 years. When Hillary is termed out of the Presidency, the Teabaggers will be ready to try to overtake the GOP, and when that doesn't happen, they will announce their separation from the GOP.

Ah, I see, Ten years.

I think if they Remain adhered they will win the election in 2016 and probably 2020, so the Dems won't be in the House until 2024 earliest.

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978
Ah, I see, Ten years.

I think if they Remain adhered they will win the election in 2016 and probably 2020, so the Dems won't be in the House until 2024 earliest.

There is zero likelihood that the GOP will take the presidency in 2016.

GOOD! We've seen the kind of damage done by letting the libs run the house for a few years, and we're on the brink of destruction as a country. If Hilary gets in its all over for us. Cya on the streets, or in the FEMA camps.

originally posted by: links234
GOP control of state legislatures has, essentially, locked Democrats out of the House of Representatives. It's not as simple as gerrymandering, but also that the population is avoiding areas where their ideology doesn't match. Meaning, more liberal people are moving to more liberal areas in their respective states.

CHART: Why The House Is A Fortress Dems Can't Win

Democratic House candidates in Pennsylvania and Michigan won more votes overall in 2012 but in each state the party ended up with fewer seats than the GOP. In Ohio, Republicans garnered more votes overall in 2012 and 2014; in each year, their percentage of seats won was vastly higher than their share of the vote.

Gerrymandering the districts certainly helps though;

Why Democrats can't win back the House

In 2012, congressional district lines were redrawn, as is constitutionally required every 10 years, based on population shifts. Republicans had the upper hand in many states after the GOP won control of governorships and state legislatures following the 2010 Tea Party wave. The end result has been a precipitous drop in the number of competitive seats and a rise in the number of seats considered so safely Republican or Democratic that they are unlikely to ever switch party control.

This last link has lots of nice charts you can look at with some added information that's keeping Democrats from winning the house:
Why Democrats Can’t Win the House

Even so, “by far the most important factor contributing to the Republican advantage,” Mr. Chen says, “is the natural geographic factor of Democrats’ being overwhelmingly concentrated in these urban districts, especially in states like Michigan and Florida.”

The short of it is that Democrats are holding fewer districts because the concentration of those districts is so high. Democrats would not only have to greatly expand their base, shifting the party platform farther to the right, but they'll have to overcome the districts that were drawn by the Tea Party majorities in 2012.

When it comes to 2016, 2018 and so on...expect the GOP to hold the house. Not because they're necessarily better or more liked, but because the districts are composed in such a way as to keep them in power.

Here we go again with the two party illusion. Decades of deception that seemingly pits one ideology against another with absolutely no resolution other than the continued erosion of our freedom.

This system does not value it's citizen's nor the tenant's on which it was founded.

Obama, Bush, Reagan, Clinton etc. all puppet's of the oligarchy.

The only viable "party" is where every Man, Woman, and Child rises up to shatter this sh#tty paradigm.

It's a giant pendulum. Every time we hear that one way has a permanent lock, they push too hard and the pendulum swings back because no one is ready to go all the way.

Expect the pendulum to swing back. There have been plenty of times when everyone was sure either party was dead for one reason of another and never taking power again. Then the current talking heads did stupid things and ... oh, hey! look at that ...

This is all well and good but if the "lifer's "in the GOP don't do a thing in the next two years or side with Obama because the GOP is full of RINO"S then this thing could be even more ugly for the GOP then it was for the Dem's come 2016.

The next two years is where the American people find out weather we have a constitutional country or a" coup de ta ".

originally posted by: ketsuko
It's a giant pendulum. Every time we hear that one way has a permanent lock, they push too hard and the pendulum swings back because no one is ready to go all the way.

Expect the pendulum to swing back. There have been plenty of times when everyone was sure either party was dead for one reason of another and never taking power again. Then the current talking heads did stupid things and ... oh, hey! look at that ...

Exactly. The whole system relies on backlash to the status quo, to the extent where the party in charge becomes the official "blame taker" for forces beyond their control. If the entire Democrat party started advancing the policies of Bush (like war in Iraq) or just started stepping out of the way, you can be sure they would be targeted as never before by mainstream republicans, for empowering them. Because that's what's required to keep the facade alive, the illusion of a vibrant conflict of ideas when in fact there is none. Long term or total Republican/Democrat control would reveal the large scale common sense values of the R/D bases will NEVER be addressed by the PTB, and the illusion of the "evil other side" is necessary to keep the people from getting what they want.

I saw this years ago, so I laugh when talk of a political party going down for good comes up. What was that quote I always used to say? I used to paraphrase the Book of the Law. Something like:

Strike low and hard master, if a king (The PTB) be concealed you cannot hurt him.

And that's exactly how it is. You can wage these political battles, but the actual forces who dictate our destinies are NEVER effected through them.

Peace!

I'm starting to think that it will perpetually go back and forth so that .gov can do whatever they want and just blame whatever party was in at that particular time.

Democrat to Republican and back ad naseum.

You can't really blame America as a whole when they simply elect dumb people in every 4 years or at least that's how they'd like us to think about it.

In reality, both parties push the collective agenda no matter who is elected under this guise

And the self hating whites in Democratic party who pander to minorities

Oh, so no white people would ever vote for democrats because they dislike Republicans?! I'll have to send myself a memo.

I'm not naive enough to believe that the GOP has a permanent House majority, but the article is essentially correct: the Democrats, regardless of the veracity of claims of gerrymandering, do, in fact, face structural problems in these types of elections for this reason. Where their base of support is deep, its very deep, but from a geographic standpoint, its not very broad. For the GOP, the opposite is true. Their depth of support is often not overwhelming like that the Dems enjoy in urban areas, but they're more competitive in rural and suburban America than the Dems are, and there are more of those types of districts than urban ones.

originally posted by: AgentShillington

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978
Ah, I see, Ten years.

I think if they Remain adhered they will win the election in 2016 and probably 2020, so the Dems won't be in the House until 2024 earliest.

There is zero likelihood that the GOP will take the presidency in 2016.

You couldn't be more wrong. Especially with a "zero likelihood". Check it out:

www.vox.com...

A totally legal, totally shady way that Republicans could ensure Hillary Clinton's (or Dem pick) defeat.

Democrats have been consoling themselves with the idea that the 2016 election is likely to look a lot more favorable to them than 2014 did. And that's true. Unless Republicans use their unprecedented sweep of state legislatures to change the rules and guarantee a victory for the GOP.

How would it work?

As National Review's Jim Geraghty explains, they could take advantage of the fact that the US Constitution grants state legislatures broad discretion in how they allocate their electoral votes to rig the system.

Right now, the way 48 states do it is they give all their electoral votes to whichever candidate won a plurality in the state. But Maine and Nebraska do it differently. They give two votes to the statewide winner, then one vote to the winner of each congressional district in the state. In practice, this makes very little difference. But as Geraghty points out it would make a huge difference if states like Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin did it. Democrats count on securing the electoral votes — all the electoral votes — of four or five of those states in order to win presidential elections.

Split them up, and it's basically impossible for Democrats to win a presidential election. Especially because district boundaries give Republicans an advantage in these states — it's often the case that Republicans win congressional districts well in excess of their share of the popular vote.

Would Republicans really do this?

Probably not. Pennsylvania Republican leaders strongly considered this in 2012 but backed down after a public outcry. Wisconsin Republicans went through a similar exercise. Which is to say this isn't a brand new idea, it's just an idea that so massively violates the established norms of American politics that nobody's gone through with it. Even Geraghty doesn't quite advocate it. He just outlines how it would work and ends with: "So . . . should Republicans pursue this course?"

But with Democrats now in control of state government in exactly zero red states, there's nothing stopping Republicans from going through with the plan. Indeed, there's nothing requiring Michigan (or any other state) from holding a presidential election at all. The state legislature could simply allocate its electoral votes to Mike Pence (or whomever) and tell angry liberals they should have thought about that when they decided not to turn out for the midterms.

There you have it! Republican win for the presidency. Unless the Republicans screw things up royally, it could take the Dems quite some time to get a stronghold, as in years and years.

a reply to: links234

So what?

It doesn't matter our problem isn't who's in congress the problem is deeper then that.

a reply to: StoutBroux

Yeah.

Okay.

The likelihood of that scenario is also zero.

a reply to: StoutBroux

Honestly, it makes more sense than what we do now. The number of electoral votes depends on Congressional districts. If you're going to allocate them on that basis, then the Congressional district vote *should* determine who receives that vote. Otherwise, why even award them in this manner?

I realize we've been doing it this way forever and its not going to change. Still, it makes little sense.