The House vs. The Senate

During the election coverage last night, a number of commentators suggested or implied that the Republicans, despite a historic victory in the House of Representatives, governor's races, and state legislative tallies, somehow didn't do all that well in the U.S. Senate.

The numbers simply don't bear that out.

It is critical to remember that all seats in the House were up for election, but only 37 Senate seats. As of this morning per CNN's estimates, the Republicans have picked up six seats in the Senate and 60 in the House. This assumes that the Republicans don't pick up Colorado or Washington (Alaska will remain Republican either way), which would make the gains in the Senate even more impressive.

These gains represent 16.2% (six out of 37) of the seats up for election in the Senate, which is more than the gain of 13.8% (60 out of 435) in the House. Even if you use CNN's estimated total, which allocates the undecided races between the parties, the Republicans would pick up 64 seats in the House, or 14.7% of all seats.

An alternative analysis looks at Republican gains as a percentage of Democratic seats up for election. There were 19 Democratic seats up for election in the Senate, and the Republican gain of six seats means 31.6% of Democratic seats were won by the Republicans (again, this would increase if Republicans eke out wins in Colorado or Washington). In the House, the current Republican gain is 60 out of 256 Democratic seats, or 23.4% of the available seats. CNN's estimated total gain of 64 is 25.0% of the available seats.

No matter how you look at it, the Republican victory in the Senate was more impressive than in the House. The reason the balance of power in the Senate didn't change hands is because only 37% of the Senate seats were up for grabs.

And the greater relative Republican strength in the Senate does not bode well for Obama. Due to gerrymandering, many House seats are not competitive so the relative underperformance in the House vs. the Senate by Republicans isn't surprising. But Senate races are statewide and represent broad swaths of voter sentiment, similar to Presidential elections.

Look for commentators to try to spin the Senate outcome as somehow undermining or inconsistent with the overall Republican victory. Doing so, they betray their partisanship and/or their innumeracy.