Gerrymandering the future

House Republicans fought for their extreme, unpopular economic and social positions during the fiscal cliff negotiations by claiming a mandate because they held the House in the 2012 election. So what about that mandate?

As of this writing, every single state except Hawai’i has finalized its vote totals for the 2012 House elections, and Democrats currently lead Republicans by 1,362,351 votes in the overall popular vote total. Democratic House candidates earned 49.15 percent of the popular vote, while Republicans earned only 48.03 percent — meaning that the American people preferred a unified Democratic Congress over the divided Congress it actually got by more than a full percentage point. Nevertheless, thanks largely to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have a solid House majority in the incoming 113th Congress. Link

Because of the census and redistricting, the 2010 election was far more important that the typical midterm election and the country lost a great deal thanks to the Republican victories. The Republicans may be approaching permanent minority status, but because of this one election, we’ll be feeling their contemptible influence for the rest of this decade.