I just went over to the CNN website to check the House status and the Repubs now have 218 to Democrats 210 according to them. So the House is unfortunately lost. But I noticed something interesting.
At this point Ds are leading in 3 of the remaining races and Rs in 4 and if this holds up it will be 213 to 222.
But what is interesting is in the popular vote totals for the House. At this point, 10 pm central time, CNN shows Rs with 50.9% (53,247,839) of the popular vote and Ds with 47.3% (49,430,838). This is a 3.6% lead for the GOP. Now previously I would have thought that if Ds lost the popular vote by 3.6% they would have been deep in the minority due to gerrymandering, but they will be within a mere 4 or 5 seats of the majority even though they are down by 3.6%.
If these hold up Ds will have 48.96% of the seats in the House (213). This would mean that Ds would have a higher percentage of seats in the House chamber than they received of the popular vote.
I have read many times on this site that due to gerrymandering favoring the Rs that Ds would have to win the popular vote by 5-6% or more in order to get a bare majority of the chamber.
But if the numbers hold up Ds will lose the pop vote by 3.6% and yet come within a mere 4 or 5 seats of a majority. This got me to thinking that if Ds had just gotten to 50% of the popular vote that they would have gotten the majority in the chamber, and if they had won the pop vote by 4% or so they would have achieved a substantial majority of seats.
So based on this info if Ds can lose the popular vote by several points and still come close to winning a majority then the gerrymandering didn’t help Rs all that much. I mean the whole point of the corrupt Repub gerrymandering is for Rs to be able to lose the popular vote big and still wind up with a majority in the chamber. They want to be able to have minority rule.
This means that the current gerrymandering and redistricting is not as favorable to Rs as we thought it was and maybe the new maps are more D friendly than the maps from the previous decade.
This would appear to bode well for Ds in the future and for the next decade. If in the next election (presidential year) Ds get a relatively higher turnout they may get a majority of the popular votes and be able to get a substantial majority in the chamber.
Having seen this this makes me feel hopeful that the Rs majority may be short-lived and their heinous gerrymandering may not be as beneficial to them as they expected.
Maybe someone more expert in this could ad some input or additional analysis of this info.