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How Many Republicans Are In The House Of Representatives 2012

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Republicans Won More House Seats Than More Popular Democrats Though Not Entirely Because Of How Districts Were Drawn

The Democratic member of Congress from Austin, otherwise represented in Washington, D.C. by Republicans, says Democrats nationally got more votes in 2012 yet Republicans ended up with their House majority.

“During the last election, Democrats won over a million votes more than Republicans,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett said in a Nov. 4, 2013, talk at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “But because of the way” House “districts are designed, the Republicans got 33 more members of the House of Representatives than the Democrats did.”

The first part of his claim sounded familiar, but is it right that this outcome arose from the way House districts were designed?


In every state, districts must be redrawn every 10 years to adjust for population changes as measured by the decennial U.S. census. Each state has its own method for drawing districts. And Texas, like most states, entrusts most of the line-drawing to state legislators.

Over the past dozen years or so, Doggett pointed out in his talk, he has represented a variety of communities–at one time holding a district that stretched from the Texas-Mexico border north into Austin–largely due to how districts were drawn by the state’s dominant Republicans.

Nationally, he said, the redistricting process “has had a significant impact on more than me and indeed on the whole framing of the national debate that is going on right now.” His lecture later touched on the influence of money in politics.

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Republicans Cant Stop Congress From Investigating The 1/6 Insurrection But Theyre Trying To Every Way They Can

WASHINGTON — Two.


That’s how many Republicans in the House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to create a select committee that will investigate the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, the worst assault on the heart of American democracy since the War of 1812. The remaining 200-odd House Republicans either voted against the committee or didn’t vote at all.

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Six months after the insurrection, the vast majority of Republican lawmakers have decided to treat January 6th as yet another partisan wedge issue or to deny the reality of what happened despite all the evidence to the contrary. In the Senate, Republicans blocked an earlier bill to establish a bipartisan independent commission. Now, in the House, fearful as ever of incurring the wrath of Donald Trump and his followers, Republican leaders fought against a select committee and threatened their own colleagues who might sit on that committee.

With all that in mind, it’s worth asking: How will this new investigation work? Will it stand any chance of digging up new information and discerning the truth of what happened on that dark day? Or will it devolve into a partisan circus like the Benghazi investigation of several years ago?

How We Got Here


The New Select Committee

Benghazi Redux?

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Us Midterm Election Results Herald New Political Era As Republicans Take House

Paul HarrisEwen MacAskill


Barack Obama was today facing a harsh new US political reality in the wake of one of the worst Democratic defeats for 70 years.

In midterm election races across America, Republicans pummelled their opponents, capturing the House of Representatives and a fistful of Senate seats.

With some seats still to be counted, the Republicans picked up at least 60 House seats, eclipsing their 54 gains in 1994 and the party’s best result since 1938. They also gained at least six Senate seats, falling short of the 10 they needed to gain control of the upper house.

It was a remarkable comeback from two years ago, when many experts expected the party to endure a long time in the political wilderness in the wake of Obama’s emphatic 2008 presidential election victory.

Instead, Obama faces a hard political lesson after a hammering that wiped away the last vestiges of the euphoria that swept him to the White House.


The political momentum has swung to the rightwing Tea Party movement, which energised the Republican base and notched up a string of high-profile victories.

The loss of the House is the first major setback Obama has faced in his relatively untroubled political rise from a community worker in Chicago to the presidency, and means that Nancy Pelosi – its first female Speaker – will give way to the Republican John Boehner.

California seemed to act as a bulwark holding back the Republican tide.

House Election 2012 Results: Republicans Renew Control Of Chamber For 2 Years


WASHINGTON — Republicans recaptured control of the House early Wednesday, besting Democrats in a billion-dollar battle and ensuring that the chamber will be dominated by their conservative agenda. Reacting to President Barack Obama‘s re-election, House Speaker John Boehner said voters want both parties to find common ground on repairing the economy.

Republicans nearly matched that, picking up nine previously Democratic seats. Their candidates defeated one Democratic incumbent apiece in Kentucky, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania and picked up an open seat in each of Arkansas, California, Indiana, North Carolina, and Oklahoma currently held by Democrats who retired or ran for another office.

With more than 90 percent of the 435 House races called by The Associated Press, Republicans had won 227 seats and were leading in 9 more. For a majority in the chamber, a party must control 218 seats. Democrats had won 176 seats and were leading in 21 others.

It appeared likely that the two parties’ margins in the new Congress would closely resemble the current tally. Republicans control the chamber by 240 to 190, plus five vacancies: two seats once held by the GOP and three by Democrats. Early Wednesday, it remained in doubt whether either party would ultimately have a net gain.


Pelosi, who was easily re-elected, has not said definitively whether she will continue to serve as Democratic leader.

Republicans Retiring In Record Numbers Fuel Fears Of Losing House At Midterms

Much ado about nothing

The Democrats need to win 25 seats to take control of the House of Representatives in 2018 and there are now 31 open seats held by Republicans

Last modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 17.58 GMT


The announcement by Congressman Darrell Issa on Wednesday that he is retiring brings to 31 the number of open seats held by Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections.

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Democrats need to win 25 seats to take control of the House of Representatives.

The unprecedented number of Republican retirements, which includes the sitting chairmen of eight different congressional committees, is a bad omen for the speaker, Paul Ryan, as he seeks to keep control of the lower chamber.

So far, five Republicans representing districts where Hillary Clinton won in 2016 are not seeking re-election this year. Four of them, including Issa, are retiring. The fifth, Martha McSally of Arizona, is seeking the state’s open Senate seat in a competitive primary against Tea Partier Kelli Ward and controversial former sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Issa had the closest race of any member of Congress in 2016. He beat his Democratic opponent Doug Applegate by 1,600 votes in a district that swung heavily against Republicans in the presidential race. Clinton won by seven points in a district that Republican Mitt Romney won by a similar margin in 2012.

In 2012 Democrats Won The Popular Vote But Lost The House Not This Year

It didn’t take long in the wake of the 2012 elections for Democrats to point out an inconsistency: The party won the popular vote in House races by more than 1 million votes, but the Republicans still controlled more seats. This was fodder for all sortsofprognostication, focusing on redistricting and the “Big Sort” as possible rationales.

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That same scenario didn’t repeat itself this year, however. In fact, 2012 is one of only two times in the past 12 cycles that the winner of the House popular vote didn’t also win more seats. The other was 1996, when Democrats barely won more of the popular vote. Both years followed strong shifts in control of the House.

Looking at the data another way, 2012 is the big dot on the graph below, the one point that’s distinctly not in either the lower left quadrant or the upper right .

Also note in the first graph that, since 1992, Democrats have received more of the popular House vote in four of six presidential cycles. Republicans have received more votes in five of the six midterm cycles. So 2016 seems to be setting up as a possible repeat of 2012: a presidential year following a dominant Republican performance. It could be a much better test of whether the Big Sort is providing a substantial long-term benefit to the GOP — or if 2012 was an outlier.

Republicans Win Fewer Votes But More Seats Than Democrats

Republicans controlled the post–2010 redistricting process in the four states, and drew new lines that helped the GOP win the bulk of the House delegation in each. Republicans captured 13 of 18 seats in Pennsylvania, 12 of 16 in Ohio, nine of 14 in Michigan, and five of eight in Wisconsin. Added together, that was 39 seats for the Republicans and 17 seats for the Democrats in the four pro–Obama states.

The key to GOP congressional success was to cluster the Democratic vote into a handful of districts, while spreading out the Republican vote elsewhere. In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans won nine of their 13 House seats with less than 60% of the vote, while Democrats carried three of their five with more than 75%.

One of the latter was the Philadelphia–based 2nd District, where 356,386 votes for Congress were tallied. Not only was it the highest number of ballots cast in any district in the state, but Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah won 318,176 of the votes. It was the largest number received by any House candidate in the country in 2012, Democrat or Republican. If some of these Democratic votes had been “unclustered” and distributed to other districts nearby, the party might have won a couple more seats in the Philadelphia area alone.

The Closest House Races of 2012

NARROW DEMOCRATIC WINNERS

Just How Bad Was The 2018 Election For House Republicans

Chris Cillizza

On Thursday, Democrat Jared Golden beat Maine Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, marking the 33rd seat pickup for Democrats in the 2018 election.

There are seven races in the House left uncalled – all are Republican-held seats; Democrats lead in five of the seven. If they win all the races where their candidates are winning at the moment, Democrats will net 38 seats. If they lose them all – which is very unlikely – they will hold at a 33-seat gain.

In an interview Wednesday with the conservative Daily Caller website,  President Donald Trump insisted that by his aggressive last-minute campaigning across the country he had saved House Republicans from seat losses that could have numbered into the 70s. “I think I did very well,” he concluded.

So did he? As compared to history?

Not really, is the answer.

There’s no question that Trump did not suffer the massive seat loss that his immediate predecessor – Barack Obama – did in his first midterm election in 2010. In that election, Republicans netted an astounding 63-seat gain, the largest since Democrats lost 72 House seats in the 1938 midterms.

But more broadly, the 33 seat loss by Republicans in 2018 places this election firmly in the upper echelon of House-seat losses by a president’s party in modern midterms.

Read Thursday’s full edition of The Point newsletter, and to get future editions delivered to your inbox.

South Carolina House Of Representatives Elections 2012

State Legislative Election Results
List of candidates

South Carolina House of RepresentativesSouth CarolinaNovember 6, 2012124 seats

The signature filing deadline for candidates wishing to run in these elections was March 30, 2012. The primary Election Day was June 12, 2012. The primary runoff took place on June 26, 2012.

See also: South Carolina State Senate elections, 2012 and State legislative elections, 2012

South Carolina’s 2012 legislative elections were marred by a series of events that eventually led to nearly 250 candidates being removed from the primary ballot. Here is a brief timeline of those events, followed by a detailed account of what happened.

  • March 30: Deadline for candidates to file a required statement of economic interest. Many candidates from both parties fail to do so.
  • Week of April 16: The State Ethics Commission gives candidates an additional 10 days to turn in the form. Democrats call the decision unfair while Republicans say that they are okay with it.
  • May 2: The South Carolina Supreme Court rules any candidate who did not file the form must be removed from the ballot. Calls for a rehearing are denied.
  • May 9: While the Senate attempts to pass legislation to allow challengers back on ballot, attorney Todd Kincannon requests a delay in the primary. Both efforts fail.
  • June 12: Primaries take place as scheduled.

Additional filing time

Republicans said they were fine with the commission’s decision.

Candidate disqualification

United States House Of Representatives Elections 2012

Election Results
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U.S. House Elections by State
  • 14Footnotes
  • Elections to the U.S. House were held on November 6, 2012. All 435 seats were up for election.

    The 2012 elections were the first using new redistricting maps based on 2010 Census data. As a result of redistricting, the number of swing races that are competitive was expected to drop below 100. Redistricting was considered a draw between Democrats and Republicans, with both parties gaining advantages in some states. Democrats would have required a net gain of 25 seats to re-take control of the U.S. House. The 2012 election produced the largest class of Latinos to ever enter Congress, while simultaneously showing the biggest increase in total seats held by Latino representatives in the history of the House. There were 22 incumbent Latinos on the ballot, and as many as nine additional challengers were considered possible to win. A total of 30 Latino members were elected to the 113th Congress.

    In 2010, 54 incumbents lost to challengers in the general election with Republicans swinging 63 total seats in their favor.

    Republicans Win Control Of House With Historic Gains

    Republicans expected to pick up between 60 and 70 seats in House, ABC projects.

    John Boehner Gets Emotional at NRCC

    Nov. 2, 2010? — ABC News projects Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives picking-up between 60 and 70 seats in a resounding rebuke to President Obama and the Democrats.

    The GOP House victory would be the biggest gain for a party in a midterm since 1938, when Democrats lost 71 seats amid deep economic malaise during the Great Depression.

    House Minority Leader and likely future speaker John Boehner was moved to tears when he addressed a crowd of supporters in Washington.

    “With their voices and their votes, the American people are demanding a new way forward in Washington,” Boehner said. “The people’s priorities will be our priorities. The people’s agenda will be our agenda. This is our pledge to America, this is our pledge to you.”

    The president called Boehner to congratulate him on the Republican’s big win. Boehner’s office released a statement saying the two men “discussed working together to focus on the top priorities of the American people, which Boehner has identified as creating jobs and cutting spending.”

    “That’s what they expect,” Boehner said. He thanked the president for the call.

    From Virginia to Indiana, Florida to North Dakota, Democratic incumbents felt the wrath of an angry electorate, fueled by record turnout among conservative voters, exit polls showed.

    House Seats Rarely Flip From One Party To The Other

    Drew DeSilver

    With Election Day 2016 a little over two months away, many political analysts are projecting Democrats to gain seats in both the House and Senate. But winning the 30 seats they need to wrest control of the House from the Republicans is generally seen as a longer shot than the four or five Senate seats they’d need to lead that chamber .

    Shifts of that magnitude are uncommon but not unprecedented: In three of the past 12 two-year election cycles, one party has racked up a net gain of 30 seats or more . So we thought it was worthwhile to take a closer look at the circumstances under which House seats do, and don’t, switch from Republican to Democratic or vice versa.

    One of the biggest obstacles to large swings from one party to the other is that so few incumbents lose their re-election bids. On average since 1992, 93% of House members who actually seek re-election have won. Even in 2010, the re-election rate fell to “only” 85%, with 338 of the 396 representatives running for re-election retaining their seats.

    Those statistics are important for an “out” party in shaping its strategy to gain seats because knocking off incumbents has produced more seat switches than has picking up open seats. In 2014, for instance, 13 of the 19 seat switches were due to incumbent defeats. In 2010, a near-record year for seat switches, 55 incumbents were unseated .

    Political PartiesElection 2016Congress

    In House Of Representatives An Arithmetic Problem

    How many Republicans and Democrats are in the House of ...

    Markets were down sharply on Friday after Speaker John A. Boehner’s tax plan failed to reach a vote in the House on Thursday evening. No Democrats were prepared to support the bill, and Mr. Boehner told reporters that his plan also lacked sufficient votes among Republicans.

    A variety of smart political observers have suggested that the markets are misreading the situation. Instead, they say, the failure of Mr. Boehner’s bill makes a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff more likely because it has now become clear that any deal will need to rely upon the support of at least some Democrats, which could ease passage through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

    Perhaps this is correct. Mr. Boehner has said that the White House and Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, will now have to take the lead in negotiations. The chance that a fiscal deal will be secured on terms that Democrats find favorable may have increased.

    But the chance that there will not be a deal at all may also have increased, or at least not one before protracted negotiations that could harm the economy. The difficulty is in finding any winning coalition of votes in the House of Representatives.

    In the diagram below, I’ve charted the major coalitions in the incoming 113th Congress, which will convene on Jan. 3. The new House of Representatives will have 233 Republicans and 200 Democrats. Two seats remain vacant, which means that 217 of 433 votes will be required to pass a bill.

    United States House Of Representatives Elections

    2012 United States elections

    2012 United States House of Representatives elections

    United States House of Representatives

    Republican

    The 2012 United States House of Representatives elections were held on November 6, 2012. It coincided with the reelection of PresidentBarack Obama. Elections were held for all 435 seats representing the 50 U.S. states and also for the delegates from the District of Columbia and five major U.S. territories. The winners of this election cycle served in the 113th United States Congress. This was the first congressional election using districts drawn up based on the 2010 United States Census.

    In the 20th century, the party with a plurality of the popular vote was unable to receive a majority in the House on four occasions; two of those occurrences took place after World War II ” rel=”nofollow”>GOP held a majority in the House). The 1942 election was the last time that the Democrats held a majority in the House without winning the popular vote.

    As of 2021, this is the last congressional election in which the Democrats won a House seat in West Virginia.

    Texas House Of Representatives Elections 2012

     State Legislative Elections 
    List of candidates

    Texas House of RepresentativesNovember 6, 2012

    The signature filing deadline for candidates wishing to run in these elections was March 9, 2012.

    * Redistricting note: Due to legal turmoil in the redistricting process, the primary date changed twice. The original filing deadline was December 12th. That deadline was then moved to December 15th by a federal court due to delays caused by redistricting legal challenges. After the US Supreme Court intervened over the constitutionality of interim maps, the current December 19th deadline was set to allow candidates more time in filing in light of the delays. The original primary date was March 6, 2012 and the original primary runoff date was set for May 22, 2012.

    Heading into the November 6 election 2012, the Republican Party holds the majority in the Texas House of Representatives:

    Texas House of Representatives
    As of November 5, 2012 After the 2012 Election
    House District 114

    What Is Gerrymandering And Does Indiana Do It

    Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing electoral district lines to favor one political party or group over another. 

    Indiana’s current state and congressional maps substantially favor Republicans, according to a recent study commissioned by activist group Women4Change and completed by Christopher Warshaw, a political science professor at George Washington University.

    Warshaw arrived at that conclusion by looking at the number of wasted votes — or the number of votes above what is needed to win — in Democratic districts compared to those in Republican districts. 

    During the 2012 House race immediately following redistricting, for example, the efficiency gap — or difference between wasted Republican and wasted Democratic votes —  was more extreme than 95% of other statehouse elections throughout the country and in Indiana over the past five decades. 

    Likewise, the 2014 state Senate election results, when the 2011 plan fully went into effect, had a higher efficiency gap than 96% of other state Senate elections. A similar gap exists on the congressional side. 

    Warshaw concluded the disparity wasn’t just due to Indiana’s natural geographical makeup. 

    Wesco argued that the maps Indiana uses currently are more fair than those used in the early 2000s when Democrats controlled the House.

    What Activists And Democrats Want To Happen

    For years, Democrats and activists alike have pushed for an independent redistricting commission to draw Indiana’s maps. Their argument is that only an independent group can do so without party influence. 

    But Republicans have long stifled any legislation that would make that change. 

    Now activists — such as Common Cause and All IN for Democracy — and Democrats alike are asking for a transparent process with more time for analysis of the proposed maps and public comment after the proposed maps are released. 

    United States House Of Representatives

    United States House of Representativesthe Housetwo chambersUnited States CongressSenate

    The following chart shows the partisan balance in the House of Representatives.

    Partisan composition, U.S. House
    See also: 117th United States Congress

    There are several important leadership positions in the House of Representatives.

    • Speaker of the House: The speaker is the presiding officer elected by the members of the House. The speaker administers the Oath of Office to House members; chairs and nominates chairs to certain committees; and appoints select members of various committees and House staff.
    • Majority and Minority Leaders: The party with the most members elects the majority leader and the other party elects a minority leader. The majority leader customarily schedules legislative business on the House floor, while the minority leader serves as a spokesperson for the minority party. The two leaders are selected at their respective party conference or caucus.
    • Majority and Minority Whips: Each party also elects a whip who acts as a middleman for communication between party leaders and members of the caucus. The parties will also often create other similar positions to help with various communication duties.

    About Legislative Sessions In Colorado

    The Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution declares that any power not already given to the federal government is reserved to the states and the people. State governments across the country use this authority to hold legislative sessions where a state’s elected representatives meet for a period of time to draft and vote on legislation and set state policies on issues such as taxation, education, and government spending. The different types of legislation passed by a legislature may include resolutions, legislatively referred constitutional amendments, and bills that become law.

    Article V of the Colorado Constitution establishes when the Colorado General Assembly, of which the House is a part, is to be in session. Section 7 of Article V states that the Assembly is to convene its regular session no later than the second Wednesday of January of each year. Regular sessions are not to exceed one hundred twenty calendar days.

    Section 7 also states that the Governor of Colorado can convene special sessions of the General Assembly. Special sessions can also be convened by a two-thirds vote of the members of both legislative houses.

    Permission To Reproduce Cawp Materials

    Reproduction of information on the CAWP website for non-commercial purposes is encouraged, provided that clear and visible credit is given to Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University. Any information reproduced must include footnotes/endnotes that apply to that information. Commercial reproduction requires prior permission in writing from the Center for American Women and Politics. All CAWP fact sheets are available on this web site and may be downloaded and copied as needed.

    United States Congress Elections 2012

    2018 post election analysis

    Election Results
    U.S. Senate Elections by State
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    U.S. House Elections by State
  • 6Footnotes
  • A total of 468 seats in the U.S. Congress were up for election on November 6, 2012.

    Heading into the election, Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate while Republicans were the majority in the U.S. House. During the presidential election year, partisan dominance of both chambers of the U.S. Congress was at stake. As a result of the election, Democrats increased their majority in the Senate while chipping away at the Republican majority in the House.

    Why Did The Republicans Win The House

    I recently overheard the following conversation:

    X: “Obama won a solid victory. The people have made their views clear. They stand with the Democratic Party.”

    Y: “Not so fast. Remember that the Republicans won a big margin in the House of Representatives. It’s really a split-decision.”

    This is interesting. How could the Republicans have won 55 percent of the House seats at the same time that Mitt Romney received only 48 percent of the popular vote? Did that many people split their vote? It turns out the answer is “no.”

    Although the Republicans won 55 percent of the House seats, they received less than half of the votes for members of the House of Representatives. Indeed, more than half-a-million more Americans voted for Democratic House candidates than for Republicans House candidates. There was no split-decision. The Democrats won both the presidential election and the House election. But the Republicans won 55 percent of the seats in the House. This seems crazy. How could this be?

    This answer lies in the 2010 election, in which Republicans won control of a substantial majority of state governments. They then used that power to re-draw congressional district lines in such a way as to maximize the Republican outcome in the 2012 House election.

    Why did the Republicans win the House of Representatives? Don’t ask the American people. They didn’t do it.

    The Impact Of Partisan Gerrymandering

    Alex Tausanovitch

    Once a decade, every state redraws its electoral districts, determining which people will be represented by each politician. In many states, this means that politicians gather behind computer screens to figure out how they can manipulate the lines to box out their competition and maximize the power of their political party. While an increasing number of states employ independent commissions to draw district lines, the large majority still lack safeguards to prevent partisan favoritism in the redistricting process—also known as partisan gerrymandering.

    It has been almost a decade since the 2010 cycle of redistricting, and the country is still reckoning with the impact. Last May, the Center for American Progress published a report that found that unfairly drawn congressional districts shifted, on average, a whopping 59 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 2012, 2014, and 2016 elections. That means that every other November, 59 politicians that would not have been elected based on statewide voter support for their party won anyway because the lines were drawn in their favor—often by their allies in the Republican or Democratic Party.

    That’s democracy—elected officials who represent and are accountable to the people. The numbers show that representation in the United States is far from fair, but with straightforward policy changes, citizens can have maps that are fair.

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