The Long Red Thread : How Democratic Dominance Gave Way to Republican Advantage in US House Elections

Authors

Kyle Kondik

Files

Description

An incisive study that shows how Republicans transformed the US House of Representatives into a consistent GOP stronghold—with or without a majority.

Long-term Democratic dominance in the US House of Representatives gave way to a Republican electoral advantage and frequently held majority following the GOP takeover in 1994. Republicans haven’t always held the majority in recent decades, but nationalization, partisan realignment, and the gerrymandering of House seats have contributed to a political climate in which they've had an edge more often than not for nearly thirty years.

The Long Red Thread examines each House election cycle from 1964 to 2020, surveying academic and journalistic literature to identify key trends and takeaways from more than a half-century of US House election results in order to predict what Americans can expect to see in the future.

Copyright Statement

The Long Red Thread © 2021 by Ohio University Press is licensed under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Language

eng

ISBN

9780821447345

Publication Date

10-26-2021

Publisher

Ohio University Press

City

Athens

Keywords

U.S. House of Representatives, House elections, US election study, GOP takeover, midterm elections, congressional redistricting, reapportionment, gerrymandering, House majority, Democratic Party vs Republican Party, Kyle Kondik, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich, Redistricting War, Texas Republicans

Disciplines

American Politics | Models and Methods | Political History | United States History

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Kondik, Kyle, "The Long Red Thread : How Democratic Dominance Gave Way to Republican Advantage in US House Elections" (2021). Ohio University Press Open Access Books. 71.
https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/71