A week from yesterday (June 24th), Oklahoma will hold its primary election. Anyone who is from Oklahoma already knows that there isn’t much to get excited about, particularly in terms of House races. The only thrills will likely come out of OK-5, where incumbent, Rep. James Lankford, has left to run for Senate. A crowded Republican field with little name recognition and even fewer dollars will likely force a runoff, although which candidates are in that runoff is hard to predict. There is also a democratic primary, but OK-5 has been solidly Republican, so it’s unlikely to have much of an impact.
This is one of a series of diaries I am writing about the lopsided state of House of Representatives races throughout the US. These diaries focus on this distortion created by single-member districts through the lens of FairVote’s analyses and proposed reforms . All race projections are from our Monopoly Politics 2014 report, which projected 333 races last cycle, each one correct. For this election, our updated report projects 368 winners, although most of the remaining 62 races have a clear lean as well. Our projections rely only on relative presidential outcomes in districts and relative performances of House candidates, and we’ll be releasing our 2016 House election projections on November 6, two days after the general election.
That we can forecast almost 400 races two days after the general election is not a testament to our forecasting abilities, but rather a demonstration of how flawed our democracy truly is.
Oklahoma – The Landscape
Ever since the mid-90s, Oklahoma’s congressional delegation has been overwhelmingly Republican. However, Democrats held OK-2, which covers the eastern portion of the state, from 2001-2013. The redistricting process saw that final blue district swing red, which was partially aided by conservative Democrat Dan Boren retiring. Markwayne Mullin won by a sizable margin. Given the current district -- and indeed, any imaginable single-member district plan -- it's is difficult to imagine an Oklahoma Democrat winning a House seat again for a long time.
Methodology
FairVote’s projections are grounded in two factors:
1. The partisanship of a district. This is determined by the performance of major party candidates in a presidential race relative to their performance nationally. Charlie Cook later adapted this to create his PVI.
2. Performance Over Average Candidate (POAC). This is determined by how a candidate fares relative to what we would expect for an average candidate of the same party and incumbency status in his/her district.
The incumbent with the strongest POAC score is Jim Bridenstine, who had a 0.7% POAC. The weakest incumbent was Markwayne Mullin, with a -7.8% POAC, although he still won handily. You can see our full Oklahoma report here.
2014 Projections
We project every single Oklahoma district to remain in Republican hands this cycle. But in all honesty, it doesn’t take much of a model to figure that out. Other projection outfits such as RollCall and Cook Report predict the same. Oklahoma’s first district will see its incumbent, Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R), run unopposed. Some of the other incumbents will face challengers in the primary and general elections, but given that the closest race last cycle was decided by 19%, it stands to reason that Republicans will retain full control over the delegation. In a state that has 5 seats and where a third of voters chose President Obama and 2012, this is disgraceful. A fair, more proportional system would ensure that Democrats held at least one seat, if not more.
What Oklahoma Needs
Oklahoma obviously could have had a better redistricting map for Democrats if they had drawn it. They probably would have had a fairer map if an independent commission had drawn it as well.
But the root of the problem for Democrats goes much deeper. As people continue to sort themselves into likeminded communities, urban areas are becoming more liberal and less urban areas becoming more conservative. As I pointed out in a previous post, this self-selection means that independent redistricting commissions can only do so much. Achieving competitive districts would require familiar snake-like districts.
The best solution is to create larger “super districts” that each elect 3 or 5 Representatives. FairVote has developed a national plan to do that, as it shows with this interactive flash map analyzing districts as they are and as they could be. We recommend that candidates be elected by ranked choice voting (RCV), where voters rank candidates. In multi-seat districts, the percentage of the vote declines with the number of seats – it is just over 25% of the vote in a three-seat district and about 17% seat districts. Done nationally, it would completely remove the incredible partisan bias we now see in U. S. house races, where Democrats are unlikely to retake the House without surpassing 55% of the vote, as we explain in this analysis.
In contrast to the current plan, our Fair Voting plan projects a more even playing field: likely wins for one Democrat and three Republicans, with one toss-up seat. Those projections depend on voter participation, though, so all voters in every district would be urged to participate. We’d likely see greater diversity within the parties, as well as the ability for independents and minor party candidates to hold the major parties accountable.
Adopting a plan that actively creates competition (and allows both parties to earn their share of seats) is the best way forward. All it requires is a statutory change from the US Congress. While that might not seem feasible now, it could very well happen in the future – especially if we recognize that our current gridlock stems from the structural failure of our electoral system.