Who Presides Over the Texas House of Representatives

Last November revealed the capstone of misrepresentation in American democracy when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes but lost in the Balloter Higher.

Just what near the U.S. Congress? How representative of the American people is the Business firm of Representatives? My Brookings colleague Molly Reynolds finds the Republican Political party's current "seat bonus"—a college pct of seats than of votes—aligns with the historic advantage for any bulk party in the Business firm over the terminal 70 years, back to 1946.

This post focuses on how representative the new 115th Congress is on a state-by-state level.

Majority party over-represented

Despite its name, the House of Representatives is not then representative.

As the nautical chart below shows, the total vote differential betwixt the ii parties for elections to the House in 2022 was 1.ii percent. Merely the difference in the number of seats is 10.8 percent, giving a total of 21 actress seats to Republicans.

Figure 1: National Distribution of Votes for Congress

	NUMBER		Percentage
Party	Republican	Democrat	Republican	Democrat
Votes	63,164,365	61,750,858	l.6%	49.four%
Seats	241	194	55.four%	44.6%
"Misrepresented Seats"	21	-21	four.8%	-4.viii

Over-representation past land

This aggregate over-representation of the majority political party is considerably farthermost when looked at country-by-state. In red states (come across Figure 2), Republicans garnered 56 percent of the vote but 74.6 percent of representation. In bluish states, Democrats won 60.3 percentage of the vote but 69.1 pct of representation.

Nearly all states are "true"—"true cherry states" have a Republican majority of votes and representation; "truthful blueish states" take a Democratic bulk of votes and representation. Ii states are "flipped blue states;"in Virginia and Wisconsin Republicans received a bulk of seats despite Democrats winning a majority of the votes for Congress.

Misrepresentation is considerably larger within each cherry-red and blueish grouping than in the U.S. as a whole. Translated into seats in the House, Democrats over-represent blue states (excluding the two flipped states) by 19 seats, whereas Republicans over-represent true red and flipped blue states by 40 seats. Republicans over-stand for scarlet states (truthful and flipped) past 16 percent points, while in united blue states the disparity is 11 percentage points.

Figure 2: Bulk Party Wins Asymmetric Representation

Misrepresentation in small-scale and big states

For private states, misrepresentation is even larger. The level of misrepresentation is 20 percent or greater in 23 states—about half the country—and over thirty percent in 12 states.

To a certain extent, misrepresentation is partly a function of state size. In minor states with a single member—Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming—there is no alternative to the votes of a portion of the citizens non being represented. In these states, on average, 37 percent of voters selected the losing party. Even states with two representatives—New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Maine, and Idaho—have a large degree of misrepresentation, on boilerplate 28 percent. This is not surprising in a winner-take-all arrangement. Overall, the misrepresentation from these small-scale states cancels out in the aggregate—in the 17 seats of these states there is but a 3 percent indicate disparity between the distribution of votes and the distribution of seats.

On the other extreme are the four largest states—New York, Florida, Texas, and California. Together, these states ship 143 representatives to Congress. Each has less than 10 percent misrepresentation—votes from the losing party in 1 district are compensated in other districts. Moreover, the overall distribution from these states is the storybook picture of democracy at piece of work: Between them, the distribution of votes and seats was equal, with less than ane percent deviation betwixt votes and representation (45 percent for Republicans, 55 for Democrats).

Figure iii: Misrepresentation in Small and Big States 2016

Notation: The level of misrepresentation is computed equally the difference between percent of votes and percent of seats.

Misrepresentation in midsized states

That leaves the 34 midsized states, with 275 seats amidst them, to business relationship for the observed misrepresentation. Figure 4 plots the number of seats from each state against the level of misrepresentation. Big and small states are gray; midsized states are ruby-red. In general in that location is an inverse correlation between the number of representatives from a country and the level of misrepresentation. States with three to 5 representatives range between 11 to 36 percentage points of misrepresentation, while those with 10-xx representatives range from four to 24 percentage points of misrepresentation.

Figure 4: Number of Seats in Congress Compared to Level of Representation

Figure five beneath shows the level of misrepresentation in the 34 midsized states, ranked in order of the level of misrepresentation with blue and carmine states shown separately. This figure shows the quite big level of disproportionate representation in many states. Out of the 34, more than one-third (13) accept a disparity between votes and representation of xx percent or larger, and in all merely five states the disparity is greater than 10 percent.

Midsized red states accept on average a considerably higher percent level of misrepresentation—in these states, while 58 percent of the votes went to Republicans, they took 76 pct of the seats—an eighteen percentage point difference that translates into 34 seats. Comparatively, in the midsized blue states, 59 percentage of votes were for Democrats, who obtained 72 percent of seats—a thirteen percentage point difference that translates into 11 seats. Furthermore, red states make up ix of the 13 states with an excess of xx points or higher misrepresentation.

Effigy five: Misrepresentation in Midsized States in 2016

Annotation: Level of misrepresentation computed as the departure between percent of votes and percent of seats.

Redistricting

What is underlying this outcome? In principle, such results are possible even if nigh of the state is competitive, but one party has an border in the bulk of the districts. In practise, how districts are fatigued tin also touch on outcomes. In fact, some states take moved to take redistricting away from elected state politicians by instituting independent redistricting commissions. The four large states that have independent commissions—California, New Jersey, Washington, and Arizona—take less than 10 percent misrepresentation. The two other states with independent commissions, Idaho, and Montana, with ii and one congressional representatives respectively, take greater than thirty percent misrepresentation. There is no getting around size!

Overrepresentation by number of seats per country

As to states with the well-nigh number of "extra" seats, Democrats dominate in California, with almost 5 addition seats. Republicans have approximately three extra seats in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.

Figure 6: Over-representation of Majority Political party

Note: Measured in congressional seats (compared with distribution of the votes).

Implications

The independence of the U.South. was launched by a revolt over the lack of representation. Misrepresentation can lead to social and economic policy distortions, feed distrust, and drive discontent in authorities. Gerrymandering hinders party competition and the resulting political monopoly feeds extremism in the majority party. The edge provided by this misrepresentation gives the majority party disproportionate power that is particularly destabilizing and dangerous in an era of heightened polarization and partisanship.

The data suggest that the nigh serious problem is in midsized states, a problem that could be alleviated by the design of districts by independent bodies.

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Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/02/22/misrepresentation-in-the-house/

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