Dave Wasserman, the U.S. House editor of the Cook Political Report and an NBC analyst, is still keeping tabs on incoming votes from the 2018 midterms in a Google spreadsheet, and the numbers show that the Democrats’ “national lead” is up to more than 8.5 million votes.
Just crossed 111.1 million votes tallied in U.S. House races. Dems' national lead is up to 8.64 million votes (7.8%) w/ millions more left to count. https://t.co/0pm7oW1pFE
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 20, 2018
Impressive! That’s Obama 2008 landslide territory. The Obama coalition is back babe!
— Jonny Dark (@realjonnydark) November 20, 2018
Um, no.
First, there is no “national popular vote” for either the House or the Senate, despite what Vox’s Ezra Klein might have told you. And second, the numbers don’t mean much when only a certain number of House seats or Senate seats were in play. If your senator wasn’t up for election this midterm, you couldn’t vote, so a “national vote” tally is meaningless.
Bc popular vote is a "thing" ?
— Scott Sterling (@Red1Echo) November 20, 2018
I see we are still talking about that thing that isn't a thing. https://t.co/laF0fMTKwT
— Charlie (@CharlieJThomas) November 20, 2018
There is no such thing as popular votes in Congress. Stop this nonsense.
— Phebe Reed (@happygolucky873) November 20, 2018
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What does that have to do with the price of tea in china? So dumb.
— Henry Yearwood (@HenryYearwood) November 20, 2018
Hi, Dave. Do you happen to know how many votes were cast in the California senate race where both candidates were Dems?
— Beef Supreme (@Supreme____Beef) November 20, 2018
1/3 of the races had only Democrats who got 100% of the vote. Quit making up things
— Ricky Dixon (@RickyD224) November 20, 2018
34 Democrats ran unopposed, so there was no GOP candidate to collect votes.
3 Republicans ran unopposed, so there was no Democrat candidate to collect votes.If you exclude uncontested races where only one party had a chance to vote, the Democrat advantage drops to 3.2%. https://t.co/3LeugXTElw
— Donny Ferguson ? (@DonnyFerguson) November 20, 2018
So what these people are suggesting is not that Democrats swept the election, but rather there were many more Democrats running unopposed, so of course in those cases the Democrats would get 100 percent of the vote. So what’s the point of counting the Democrats’ “national lead”?
For one, it lends credence to the argument that we ought to get rid of the Senate, since there obviously are so many more Democrats in the country and they don’t hold the majority there, so something’s obviously broken.
If you wait long enough, there will be more votes cast than voters. Oh shit, never mind!
— Who is John Galt? (@Dagny_Galt) November 20, 2018
Related:
Even political science professors are offering up the math behind the ‘Senate popular vote’ https://t.co/t96v0pSrdy
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) November 9, 2018
NBC News’ Ken Dilanian wonders how long the majority will let itself be ‘pushed around by a rural minority’ https://t.co/y6nkZwLaOQ
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) November 7, 2018
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