By Tim Kiska
This is a study on how a loss at the ballot box can still be a win.
The topic arises because some Republicans, who are meeting at a state convention this weekend in Lansing, are discussing a change in the way Michigan’s electoral votes are awarded. The state, like 47 others, awards those votes on a winner-take-all basis.
But some Republicans are arguing that electoral votes should be parsed by congressional district: If a specific congressional district goes Republican, the Republican presidential candidate would pick up the electoral vote. One estimate has Mitt Romney actually winning the biggest share of Michigan’s electoral votes in November, even though he lost handily to President Barack Obama.
(A call to state Rep. Peter Lund’s office Wednesday was met with the comment “We’re not doing interviews on that.” The person at Lund’s office hung up the phone when asked why Lund wasn’t commenting. So much for that.)
Which raises a fundamental question: Exactly how reflective are these congressional districts of the state?
For the answer, I looked at how the popular vote in the state’s congressional races stacked up against how many Democrats and Republicans went to Washington since 2002.
Logic suggests that Michigan’s congressional delegation would be majority Democratic if the party won more than half the popular vote. Or, if Republicans and Democrats split the vote somewhat evenly, the state’s congressional delegation would be roughly 50-50.
But that’s not the case. I added up the popular vote for the Dems and the GOP in each election between 2002 and 2012, and compared it with the party makeup of members of Congress from Michigan.
It would seem that Republicans win, even when they lose. And when it’s a virtual tie, they still win.
The evidence:
A couple of points:
• The Dems actually won the popular congressional vote in 2008 and 2012, but the GOP still dominated Michigan’s congressional delegation. Republicans currently hold nine of the state’s 14 seats, even though the party’s congressional candidates won only 46 percent of the vote in November. It was even worse in 2008, when the party maintained a majority among the state’s 15-member delegation, even after a 52 percent—44 percent drubbing at the polls, the party’s worst showing in that decade.
• Even in years when the two major parties split the popular congressional vote (2004 and 2006), Republican still enjoyed a major edge.
So how could this be? And what’s the likelihood that this state of affairs will change?
The answer to Question Number One: Congressional lines are redrawn every 10 years, after each decennial census. The rules are somewhat fuzzy. As long as the new districts aren’t actively disenfranchising minorities and running afoul of the Voting Rights Act, it’s all legal.
The Democrats sued in U.S. District Court, alleging the new districts caused problems for a few minority state reps, but the case went nowhere. The common practice is to jam Democrats into a few districts, and then draw the remainder of the lines to GOP advantage. Which is pretty much the way it worked: All five Democratic victors won by 62 percent or more, which is landslide territory.
The GOP took all of the rest by big margins, with the exception of the first congressional district. (That’s the Upper Peninsula and the northern half of the Lower Peninsula, which first-term Republican Dan Benishek won by less than a percentage point.)
As for the answer to Question Number Two: Things won’t change for nearly another decade. For that, look to the 2010 election, which was a GOP route. For Republicans, that election is a gift in that it will keep giving for another decade.
Republicans ran the table in 2010. They won the state House, the state Senate, plus the race for governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General. That gave Republicans complete control over redistricting before the 2012 election, and will stick until the next U.S. Census count in 2020. (Republicans were in charge for the 2002 redistricting, too.)
Not that the topic hasn’t been discussed. The Center For Michigan, the Ann Arbor-based think tank, presented an elegant, methodical and well-reasoned paper explaining how redistricting (or gerrymandering, as some like to call it) merely adds to voter cynicism. The study was presented just as districts lines were about to be drawn. A few analysts read the paper, but the Center’s reasoning--solid though it was—was ignored. Republicans weren’t much interested in change, and neither were the Dems.
It’s not just Michigan. According to a study published in the New York Times by Princeton University’s Sam Wang, Democrats picked up 1.4 million more votes than the GOP in last November’s election. However, the GOP still controls the House by a 234-201 margin. Wang found that Michigan is one of six states with major disconnects between popular vote at the party makeup in Washington. (Check out the study here.)
Some states are looking at using a non-partisan or bi-partisan commission to draw boundaries.
Sane idea. Good luck with that.
