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.
For avid primary watchers, the first of July signifies the beginning of a long wait: the next round of primaries isn’t until August. On the plus side, this gives us plenty of time to overanalyze the states that are coming up. This post will focus on Michigan, a state in which the current situation favors the GOP. That said, there is hope for the Democrats, but they must fight an uphill battle to win a majority of seats in the House delegation.
In terms of horserace banter, Michigan has three seats that look to be competitive in the general election. MI-1, which is held by Republican Dan Benishek and encompasses northern Michigan and the UP, could easily swing toward the Democrats. MI-8 (Open) and MI-7 (Tim Walberg) could also fall into the hands of the Dems. Both of the aforementioned Republicans will face primary challengers. However, none of the challengers look to be much of a threat. MI-8 is crowded on both sides of the ballot, so expect a hard fought race out of both winners.
One primary to watch will be the Democratic primary in MI-14, a solidly blue district in the Detroit metro area. Four candidates are running for the Democratic nomination, including state representative Rudy Hobbs and former U.S. representative Hansen Clarke. The winner will be all but guaranteed a victory come November.
Michigan – The Landscape
Michigan is a fairly balanced state politically, although you wouldn’t know it by looking at the House delegation. While the state is split fairly evenly between Republicans and Democrats, Dems only hold 5 out of 14 seats. Furthermore, Michigan hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, when the first President Bush won an electoral college landslide over Michael Dukakis.
It seems then, that partisan gerrymandering has played a role in making the state’s House delegation disproportional. However, the problem wouldn’t be solved with an independent commission. Democrats are heavily concentrated in the Detroit and Flint metro areas, so creating competitive districts would require ridiculously carved up districts. A better option is to create multi-seat districts instead.
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 Candice Miller, with a score of 10.4%. The weakest incumbent was Dan Benishek, with a POAC of -4.4%. You can see our full Michigan report here.
2014 Projections
This cycle, we are projecting 6 Republican winners, 5 Democratic winners, and 3 toss up races. The three toss-ups (Districts 1, 7, and 8) are projected as slight Republican districts by both Roll Call and Cook Report. However, we are only factoring in district partisanship and POAC scores, rather than analyzing the dynamics of the race itself, so our projections are more conservative.
What Michigan Needs
Michigan 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 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 have pointed out in previous posts, 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 7 Republican seats and 7 Democratic seats. Furthermore, there are some serious benefits to electing candidates this way. For instance, in a district that elects 5 candidates, a candidate must only receive 17% of the vote to guarantee election. That means that progressives, Greens, and other groups who are typically left out of the process will be able to actually elect their candidate of choice.
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.