In the wake of the 2018 midterm election, it’s become clear that Americans need to take a civics lesson.
Joy Behar of “The View” blamed gerrymandering for the reason why Democrats failed to reclaim the Senate and Republicans instead expanded their majority.
During the show, Matthew Dowd tried to summarize what took place on election night, saying, “So Democrats won the popular vote last night by 8 million votes. They lose U.S. Senate races in red areas — ”
“Because of gerrymandering,” Behar interjected. Dowd corrected her that it was congressional districts that are gerrymandered, not states.
Dowd is correct. Gerrymandering played no role in the Senate races.
An estimated 113 million people participated in the 2018 midterm election. It’s the first time ever a midterm election exceeded 100 million votes. That’s 49 percent of the electorate.
In the House, Democrats received more than 51 million votes while Republicans received more than 47 million votes. Because congressional districts are drawn so that each have roughly the same population size, it makes sense that Democrats would take control of the House.
But when we get to the Senate, it’s pretty evident that people don’t understand how elections work.
In the Senate, Democrats got more than 46 million votes while Republicans got just more than 33 million votes. Yet, the GOP expanded their majority in the Senate. You probably saw posts on Twitter that point that out.
Republicans lost the popular vote in Senate races by over 15 percentage points, but still gained two seats. https://t.co/TFVdDGIiat
Our country is not a democracy.
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) November 7, 2018
But again, it’s inaccurate. The Senate popular vote does not matter. The Senate is not a parliamentary body like in the United Kingdom or Canada. State lines were not drawn based on population size, and only one-third of Senate seats are up for election every two years.
Twenty-four of 33 seats that were up for election were held by Democrats. Two of them were held by independents who caucus with the Democrats. So basically, 26 of 33 seats were held by Democrats. If you factor in that California’s Senate race was between two Democrats in the general election, it makes absolute sense that Democrats got more votes than Republicans, but didn’t win in the states they needed to to reclaim the majority.
It must be painful to be a Democrat and see record turnout that doesn’t meet the standard of the purported blue wave. But now that you’re going out to vote, perhaps it’s time to also read a book on civics.
