#demographs

OK numbers freaks — here’s a different take from U.Va’s Center for Politics on an argument some Virginia GOP politicos use to explain their party’s dominance in the General Assembly.

(That argument, by the way, is NOT that Virginia is gerrymandered)

The argument that Center for Politics analyst Sean Trende and some Virginia Republicans quite independently mention is that a minority of voters can control a majority of seats when voters of one party are heavily concentrated in a small number of places, while most places are evenly split.

So 58.5 million Republican votes in 2012 translated to 232 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, while 60.3 million Democratic votes won 200 seats.

Sort of the Washington version of less is more.

Trende’s analysis looks at Presidential politics. It argues that an oft-remarked recent trend, that white voters are becoming more and more inclined to vote Republican, may not shift Presidential elections much.

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