Wednesday, November 7, 2012

What about the House of Representatives?

I'm very relieved that Barack Obama has won and kept from the White House what has become the party of climate-change denialists.

However, my joy is tempered by the (long-expected) failure of the Democrats to win a majority in the House. Along with that go the fears that policy will continue to be constrained by gridlock and blackmail or that the need for concessions will mean that positively harmful measures will be passed as a quid pro quo for necessary measures.

Perhaps the Democrats will focus early on the next mid-term elections, with a clear and attractive programme to be implemented in the final two years of an Obama administration in co-operation with a Democratic House and Senate.  

As I write, there are still a few results to be declared. I'm itching to get my hands on the full results. In particular, I'm interested to see how the total popular vote for the House came out. Did the Democrats win the popular vote but lose the House? If so, that's further evidence that the US political system is severely dysfunctional - even more so than the British system (I have been an enthusiast for proportional representation for the past 35 years).

The full results should be interesting. Will there be evidence of selective or cross-voting - eg people voting for a Republican congressman but abstaining in the presidential election out of distaste for (the probably at heart moderate) Mitt Romney? Or the other way round - voting for Romney but not for a Tea Party Republican congressman?

Will I find the data before I have moved on to other things?

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