Political analyst Dave Wasserman notes that Republicans got 4% more of the vote than Democrats did in the Congressional elections. Bu that doesn’t guarantee they will win control of the House of Representatives. Control of the House is “still uncertain,” he says, because some races remain too close to call, with additional votes to be counted. Democrats have at least a 25% chance of retaining control of the House of Representatives, according to prediction markets. In reality, the Democrats have at least a 30% chance of keeping control of the House, because late-counted votes tend to help Democrats in states like California, and counting of votes will continue in California for days.
Some participants in prediction markets are ignoring the possibility of seats flipping to the Democrats. That is true in many comments at places like PredictIt, where people who place bets seem to be assuming that uncounted ballots are almost as Republican as already-counted ballots. As Mark Masterson notes, “So much still to be counted in California. With 5 seats out there that Dems could possibly flip. It could be 2 to 3 weeks before California is done counting. They are not expected to flip them all but it’s nowhere near callable yet.”
Progressive gerrymandering took a toll on Republicans. In Nevada, Republican congressional candidates received more votes statewide than Democrats, but Republicans will receive only one of the state’s four House seats, thanks to the gerrymander passed by Nevada’s Democratic-controlled legislature. In Illinois, the state’s Democratic legislature adopted bizarrely-shaped, gerrymandered seats that packed Republicans into as a few districts as possible. The result was that the GOP won only three seats out of seventeen in Illinois — less than 20% of all Congressional seats — while the Democrats won 14, even though Republicans received over 40% of the vote statewide.
“Republican votes were poorly distributed,” notes Nick Riccardi. “This is partly a function of” the GOP “appealing more to Latinos and Asians” than it did in past elections. Hispanics and Asians are “not that well-distributed from an electoral perspective,” so a political party that increases its vote totals among Hispanics and Asians may not pick up that many additional House seats. If Republicans “gain more in these demographics you’ll probably see this become a regular thing,” the GOP getting a higher percentage of the popular vote than it gets as a percentage of seats in Congress. Hispanic and Asian voters are not as well-distributed as black voters, who more reliably vote for Democrats.
