Overview
House Elections are Broken
- Use our interactive spreadsheet to see how uncompetitive and unrepresentative election results can be in our winner-take-all system.
- Elections are not competitive. More than 80% of U.S. House districts are completely safe for the party that holds them, and only a small fraction will be true toss-ups in 2018. As a result, millions of Americans are perpetually represented by politicians they oppose, with little hope of changing things at the polls.
- Outcomes are distorted. We project that in 2018, Democrats are only likely to win the House if more than 55% of voters want a Democratic House. Many state delegations are even more skewed, as in Massachusetts, which elects 9 Democrats and 0 Republicans, even though nearly 40% of its voters prefer the GOP.
- Representatives are more polarized than voters. Voters in general elections must choose between polarized candidates selected by highly partisan primary voters, leaving less partisan Americans without a route to representation.
- To see how things could be different under a more fair system, read our Fair Representation Act Report, or view our page on the Fair Representation Act.
