FairVote Blog
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Clashing Mandates and the Role of Voting Structures
by Rob Richie // November 20, 2012 //President Barack Obama won the presidential election by more than four million votes and 129 electoral votes, but Mitt Romney has carried a large majority of U.S. House districts and a majority of House seats are held by Republicans representing a district where Obama was defeated. Those facts point to tensions in the months ahead--and to the value of rethinking our voting rules to ensure a level playing field for all.
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Magic Numbers: Small Vote Shifts in Key States Could Have Altered Electoral College Outcomes
by Andrea Levien // November 16, 2012 //One commonly cited benefit of the Electoral College is that, even when the national popular vote for president is close, it creates a decisive victory for one candidate or the other, giving the winner more legitimacy. However, these "decisive" victories are often more tenuous than they seem. There are plenty of elections in which slight vote shifts in key states would have changed the winner of the Electoral College vote, despite the original winners' significantly larger leads in the nationwide vote.
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The 2012 Elections and the Vanishing Congressional Moderate
by Devin McCarthy // November 15, 2012 //Many observers of the American political process have bemoaned our increasingly partisan Congress, with representatives from both parties clinging to the party line and refusing to compromise with the other side. If you were hoping that the 2012 elections would help this problem, here's some bad news: things are only getting worse. The congressional moderate is on the verge of extinction.
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Tracking Presidential Campaign Field Operations
by Andrea Levien // November 14, 2012 //The most visible ways that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates show favoritism for swing states are through public campaign events and ad spending. However, tracking where candidates opened field offices is another useful method of measuring candidate attention. Unsurprisingly, field office placement in the 2012 presidential election showed a strong bias towards swing states.
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FairVote's Unique Methodology Shows That 52% of Voters Wanted a Democratic House
by Rob Richie, Devin McCarthy // November 13, 2012 //Using its unique methods for analyzing the underlying preferences of voters, FairVote has determined that the Republican Party has a significant structural advantage in U.S. House elections. That advantage was the most important reason why the GOP kept a comfortable majority of 54% of seats in the House despite Democratic candidates having an overall 4% advantage in voter preference over their Republican opponents.
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France May Introduce a Little Bit of Proportional Representation to its Legislative Elections
by Devin McCarthy, Sara Helmi // November 12, 2012 //Proportional representation may be coming to the French legislature--or at least 10% of it.
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FairVote's First Take on RCV Elections in Four Bay Area Cities
by Rob Richie, Mollie Hailey // November 12, 2012 //Ballots for Tuesday’s ranked choice voting (RCV) elections in four cities in the Bay Area are still being counted, but it is clear that RCV has again worked well. FairVote found that voters used the system effectively, election officials were smart to make it a true "instant runoff" and candidates of color again were elected in high numbers.
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Arizona Defeats Top Two Primary: What's Next for Reformers?
by Drew Spencer // November 9, 2012 //As the nation eagerly followed the incoming results of the Presidential election on Tuesday, we at FairVote also kept a keen eye on the results of a handful of electoral reform ballot measures, including Arizona's vote on Proposition 121, the Top Two primary law. We were concerned about the impact that this proposed form of Top Two might have in Arizona. But Prop 121's defeat became apparent early in the evening, with over two-thirds of Arizona voting against it.
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Pledge to Stand with Voters: A New FairVote Initiative
by Rob Richie, Lizz Hudler // November 8, 2012 //With our pledge to Stand with Voters FairVote asserts that it's time to fight for democratic principle over partisan politicking. Promoting and protecting our representative democracy is far more important than seeking short-term advantage in electoral rules.
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Gains for Women in Senate Help Make Our Case for Representation 2020
by Patricia Hart // November 8, 2012 //Refusing to sit idly by and let the boys have all the fun, women played a lead role in the 2012 presidential election as a key voting bloc. And as candidates, women etched their names into political history with a diverse field of contenders, winning several significant congressional races and achieving many firsts.