Dubious Democracy 2024
In poll after poll, American voters increasingly say they feel unheard by their elected officials, that politics is broken, and that there aren’t enough choices on the ballot. When it comes to our congressional elections, they’re unquestionably right.
FairVote’s 2024 Dubious Democracy report highlights the overwhelming lack of competition and representation in U.S. House of Representatives elections. In 2024, 84% of House elections were uncontested or won by over 10 points – with 66% uncontested or won by over 20 points. The entire House was elected by just 36% of eligible voters.
As part of this report, we ranked all 50 states on “Voter Voice.” Higher-performing states have higher turnout, closer elections, and more representative outcomes. The metric consists of five sub-measures:
- Margin of victory
- Share of landslide victories
- Voter turnout
- Voter consensus for winning candidates
- Partisan skew
Read on for more detail about what these metrics mean, and how we can give voters a stronger voice and incentivize better governance with reforms like ranked choice voting and the Fair Representation Act.
Related reports
Monopoly Politics 2026
We project that 81% of House seats will be safe for one party, with another 9% leaning strongly to one party – 18 months before the election.
Fewest Votes Wins
A report on plurality winners in primary elections in 2024. Many of these plurality winners went on to win safe seats in the general election – meaning they were effectively elected by just a fraction of a fraction of voters.
How does your state rank for Voter Voice?
The map and chart below show the rankings for each state. You can access the full data here.
Notably, Alaska and Maine – the two states that currently use ranked choice voting statewide – perform well in most categories. One exception is the partisan skew metric, though that primarily reflects the states’ low number of congressional districts. Smaller states tend to perform worse on partisan skew because states with only one or two representatives have fewer chances to elect representatives from both major parties.
House elections remain uncompetitive
The 2024 congressional elections were marked by a continuation of the 2022 cycle’s historic lack of competitiveness. 12 states didn’t have a single competitive House election. The average margin of victory excluding uncontested races remained about the same, at 27 points.
States with no competitive elections:
Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming
285 House elections (66%) were uncontested or landslides, where the margin of victory was 20 percentage points or more.
Only 37 out of 435 elections (9%) were decided by less than 5 points, close to the historic low of 36 in 2022. The number of “competitive” races (races with a margin between 5 and 10 points) dipped from 35 to 31.
Lack of competition in House elections means less accountability to voters and less incentive for members to work across the aisle and solve problems. The states with the most competitive elections are Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, New Hampshire, and New Mexico.
Just 36% of eligible voters chose the nation’s representatives
Members of Congress will often say voters sent them there to take action on important issues. Yet in the 14 years that FairVote has published this analysis, the people who actually voted for the winning candidates have never been a majority of eligible voters.
2024 was no exception. The “voter consensus,” or the share of the voting-age population who voted for their House representative, was only 36%. 20% voted for a losing candidate. The remaining 44%, or more than 116 million people, did not vote.
Partisan skew distorts representation
Voters should be able to expect that their vote is meaningful. If 40% of voters in a state support a party, around 40% of the seats should be held by that party. Unfortunately, single-member districts and gerrymandering stymie the will of many voters. We measure this unfairness through “partisan skew” – the difference between the percentage of the vote for a party and the percentage of representatives of that party in each state.
Median partisan skew in states with three or more representatives was 19 percentage points, meaning the difference between a party’s share of the votes and its share of House l seats was 19 points.
Let’s take one red state and one blue state as examples of what partisan skew looks like:
Tennessee
64% Republican vote for Congress
89% of seats held by Republicans
Maryland
63% Democratic vote for Congress
88% of seats held by Democrats
How to make congressional elections meaningful
Uncompetitive elections, partisan skew, and low voter consensus are all indications of the structural problems inherent in winner-take-all elections. We can make our elections more competitive, and our government more representative, with ranked choice voting and proportional representation.
Specifically, the Fair Representation Act – the leading effort to implement proportional representation for the U.S. House – would promote meaningful competition and better representation in every district. When districts elect just one representative, it’s impossible for that representative to adequately reflect the full diversity of views in their district. But when districts elect three or more representatives with proportional ranked choice voting, the vast majority of voters elect someone who shares their views.
The Fair Representation Act also promotes more meaningful competition – and with it, higher turnout – because it effectively eliminates gerrymandering. Multi-member districts with ranked choice voting ensure an area’s political left, right, and center earn their fair share of representation. Poorly drawn district lines no longer lock voters out.
See the rankings for each sub-measure
The Voter Voice score is made up of five sub-metrics. The charts below show how the states rank on each one individually.
Access the data
Our full dataset is available here.
