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Democrats grumbled in 2012 that they had won more votes in House races than Republicans had, butstillended up trailing their rivals in seat count.

This years midterm results were a lot moreclear-cutRepublicans won in a routbut continued to highlight how Democrats face an uphill battle in securing theseats to match their popular vote, due to the structuring of district lines and Democratic voters concentration in urban areas.

Back in 2012,Democrats won a majority of the two-party vote50.6%, or nearly 1.2 million more votes than Republicansbut failed to reclaim their majority in the House, leaving the party with just 46% of the chambers seats.

This time around, Democrats won 47% of the two-party vote, according to an analysis of votes by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. That garnered them about43%of the seats in the chamber, with some races still undecided. Republicans, by contrast, won 53% of that vote, and come January will control about56%of the seats.(The two-party vote refers to the percentage of ballots cast for Democrats and Republicans that either party won, and excludes votes cast for independent or other third-party candidates.)

Democrats are winning way too many of their districts by 100,000 votes and losing too many districts by 20,000 or 30,000 votes, saidDavid Wasserman, a political analyst with the Cook Political Report.

Mr. Wasserman said a combination of factors have made it such that Democrats would need to win the House vote by a margin of about nine percentage points in order to win a majority in the chamber. This year, they lost by six points.

There are two main reasons for the discrepancy between votes and seats, Mr. Wasserman said. The first is that Democrats tend to congregate in cities. That means that congressional candidates in urban areas often win by big marginsbut win fewer races across the country. The plus side for Democrats: Their concentration in urban areas gives them an edge in presidential elections, since the electoral college is based on a winner-take-all system.

The second reason Democrats are disadvantaged in House elections is that Republicans were able to capitalize on the sweeping gains they made in the 2010stateelections to redraw the lines of congressional districts to their advantage. (That process happens once every 10 years.) Mr. Wasserman pointed to Pennsylvania as an examplethere, Republicans won 72% of the seats in 2012 but won 83,000 fewer votes than Democrats.

Original post:
Deep Loss by Democrats Obscures Partys Numbers Problem