November 2018 U.S. House Totals by Party

All states have finished their official vote tallies except for West Virginia.  The national totals for U.S. House by party (using the unofficial West Virginia returns, which will probably be almost exactly like the official ones) are:

Democratic  60,447,537; Republican 50,751,049; Libertarian 768,015; Green 224,919; Working Families 217,172; Conservative 207,094; Independent Parties (of Connecticut, Louisiana and Oregon) 74,672; Reform 66,579; Constitution 59,972; Independence Parties (of Minnesota and New York) 57,463; Working Class 53,102; Women’s Equality 41,317; United Utah 36,177; Legal Marijuana Now 15,791; American 15,011; Progressive 10,758; Independent American of Utah 6,686; Liberty Union 3,924; and Socialist Equality 2,213.

The Republican share of the vote, 44.67%, is its lowest share for US House since 2008, when it was 42.94%.

For accuracy, all data was checked against data in the Cook Political Report.  The national totals don’t agree because the Cook Political Report, and also Ballotpedia, assign to the major parties the vote cast for minor parties that participated in fusion.  BAN disagrees with this approach because if the voter chooses to vote for a minor party, it seems that voter’s vote should be recorded for the party that the voter actually chose.



19-Year-Old Candidate for Chicago Alderman Gets on Ballot After Challenge Withdrawn

On December 15, David Krupa, a 19-year-old college student running for Chicago alderman, 13th district, got on the ballot.  He had needed 473 valid signatures and had submitted 1,703.  But then his opponent, who is backed by the Chicago Democratic organization, submitted 2,700 affidavits from voters who had claimed they had signed for Krupa and that they now wanted to withdraw their signatures.  Only 187 of those voters had actually signed for Krupa.  The move got so much bad publicity for the organization, it fell apart.  See this story.  Thanks to Jim Riley for the link.

U.S. Senate National Totals for 2018 Shows Huge Gap Between Democrats and Republicans

In the 33 regularly-scheduled U.S. Senate elections held last month, the total for all Democrats was 50,770,269; for Republicans, 32,803,554.

These totals do not include votes cast for minor parties that cross-endorsed a major party nominee.  Nor do they include the votes for independent U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King, even though some sources tend to lump their vote totals into the Democratic column, since those two Senators support the Democratic Party when the Senate elects its leadership.

The main reason the Democratic margin is so huge is that in California, no one was permitted to vote for anyone for U.S. Senate except a Democrat.  So the Democrats piled up 11,113,364 votes for U.S. Senate in California, with zero votes for anyone else.

Maine Secretary of State Converts all Registered Libertarians to Independents

On December 14, the Maine Secretary of State converted all 5,500 registered Libertarians to registered independents.  The Maine Secretary of State had been told that the party intends to file a lawsuit soon, arguing that it is unconstitutional for states to automatically change voter registration just because the party goes off the ballot.  Only a handful of states have that policy.  In five states, courts have ruled that voters have a right to be registered into unqualified parties:  Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma.

If the Maine Libertarians could keep their registrations, then the party would be back on the ballot.  It lost its qualified status recently because it didn’t have at least 10,000 registrants who actually cast a ballot in November 2018.  But the law says a new party can become qualified if it has 5,000 registrants.  So if the party still had its registrants, it could re-qualify as a “new” party.

California and New York Election Officials Release Final Vote Tallies

On December 14, both California and New York finished their official election results tallies.  The only state that hasn’t finished is West Virginia.  The Connecticut Secretary of State’s web page says the election results listed there aren’t official, but they are official and complete except for a single legislative district, the State House 120th district.  Here are the New York results.  Here are the California results.

Some state election web pages prominently display the election night unofficial results, and yet those states also have the final official vote totals, but the final official vote totals are in a less prominent part of the web page, which might lead someone to think that the official final results are not there yet.