History of Monopoly Politics

FairVote pioneered the Monopoly Politics methodology in 1997 to show what really matters in congressional elections: partisanship. The key insight we identified and built upon — that presidential candidate performance in a district exposes that district’s underlying partisanship  — has become widely recognized and forms the basis of the Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI) and other similar measures. 

For over 25 years, we’ve demonstrated the astounding predictive power of national partisanship. While other forecasting models rely on polling data and other factors, our model has stayed simple throughout the years. To predict each seat, we only consider three factors; how red or blue is the district, whether there is an incumbent running, and how that incumbent performed in their last three elections. We do not consider any polling data, campaign finance data, or anything else particular to the candidates running.

Our ability to examine trends over 25 years of congressional elections demonstrates the degree to which political polarization has increased. Monopoly Politics’ high-confidence projections were over 99% accurate for six of the last seven election cycles.

Competitive seats

The Monopoly Politics methodology routinely makes high-confidence projections for 80% of seats or more. Over the last two decades, the number of seats for which we make high-confidence projections has increased and hit a record, 25-year high for 2024, as more seats become “safe” for one party.

Incumbency advantage remains low

In 2022, the “incumbency bump” hit a 25-year low, with incumbents only earning a boost of 1.3 percentage points compared to non-incumbents. 

The Monopoly Politics methodology allows us to measure the degree by which incumbents overperform or underperform what we would expect from a generic member of their party. In previous decades, incumbency awarded candidates a benefit of six or seven points. Now, as national partisanship becomes more important than local issues, incumbency is becoming less and less important. Most incumbents win their races, but that tends to be a result of most districts being overwhelmingly safe for one party. 

Our 2024 projections assume that the incumbency bump will level off at 1.3%. 

The 2024 horse race

A key advantage of the Monopoly Politics methodology is that it relies on nothing except prior election results, allowing us to make our projections for the next Congress as soon as election results are finalized for the current Congress. 

As of February 2023, we project with high confidence 192 seats for Republicans and 175 seats for Democrats. The remaining 68 seats are too competitive for us to project with high confidence. We can also extend our projections to include the more competitive seats, although we consider those full projections to be lower-confidence. In our full projections, we estimate 220 Republican seats and 215 Democratic seats, meaning Republicans can be expected to control the chamber with a five-seat majority, narrower than their 10-seat majority in the current Congress. 

There are nine incumbents who represent districts that favor the other party by three points or more, based on our District Partisanship measure. These five Democrats and four Republicans are the incumbents we consider most vulnerable going into 2024. 

District	Incumbent Name	Party	District Partisanship (Dem %)
AK-AL	Mary Peltola	D	42.5%
ME-02	Jared Golden	D	44.6%
WA-03	Marie Gluesenkamp Perez	D	45.6%
OH-09	Marcy Kaptur	D	46.2%
PA-08	Matt Cartwright	D	46.3%
CA-13	John Duarte	R	53.4%
CA-27	Mike Garcia	R	54.1%
CA-22	David Valadao	R	54.3%
NY-04	Anthony D’Esposito	R	55.1%

Crossover representatives are going extinct

Crossover representatives are House members whose district voted for a different party for president than for Congress. Over the past decades, the number of crossover districts has steadily decreased. This decrease means fewer members have an incentive to engage in bipartisanship. 

There are 23 crossover representatives in the current Congress, a slight increase over 2020 but otherwise the lowest number in Monopoly Politics’ 25-year history. 

Redistricting was intended to ensure legislatures keep pace with changing population trends. Instead, partisan lawmakers have used it to further political goals by drawing boundaries to protect incumbents, harm opponents and reduce competition. 

When one party controls a state legislature or the U.S. House, lawmakers often use advanced computer software to manipulate district lines. The software is so precise that lawmakers choose their voters — instead of voters choosing them.

Election prospects drive vacancies

Congressional vacancies hit a high point in 2022 with Democrats in particular reaching a 30-year high for the number of retirements. Research indicates that members of Congress may be incentivized to retire due to increased polarization, redistricting, and term limits on committee positions for Republicans. 

Monopoly Politics suggests that retirements may often be driven by a representative’s outlook for their next election. Prior to the 2022 midterms, we identified 21 crossover representatives — members serving in districts that voted for the opposite party in the most recent presidential election. (These are congresspeople who represented a crossover district after redistricting, not those who won as a crossover in 2020 prior to redistricting. Several, like Ohio’s Steve Chabot (R) and Marcy Kaptur (D), were only in crossover districts because of redistricting.) Five of those 21 chose to retire or seek higher office, and five of them lost their seats, including one in a primary.

District	Pre-2022 Incumbent	Party	2022 Result	2022 General Election Margin
AK-AL	Mary Peltola	D	Won	55.0%
AZ-01	David Schweikert	R	Won	50.4%
AZ-02	Tom O’Halleran	D	Lost	46.1%
CA-22	David Valadao	R	Won	51.5%
CA-27	Mike Garcia	R	Won	53.2%
CA-40	Young Kim	R	Won	56.8%
CA-45	Michelle Steel	R	Won	52.4%
FL-07	OPEN SEAT (Stephanie Murphy retired)	D	N/A	N/A
FL-13	OPEN SEAT (Charlie Crist ran for governor)	D	N/A	N/A
IA-03	Cindy Axne	D	Lost	49.6%
ME-02	Jared Golden	D	Won	53.1%
MI-03	OPEN SEAT (Peter Meijer defeated in primary)	R	N/A	N/A
NE-02	Don Bacon	R	Won	51.3%
NM-02	Yvette Herrell	R	Lost	49.6%
NY-01	OPEN SEAT (Lee Zeldin ran for governor)	R	N/A	N/A
OH-01	Steve Chabot	R	Lost	47.2%
OH-09	Marcy Kaptur	D	Won	56.6%
PA-01	Brian Fitzpatrick	R	Won	54.9%
PA-08	Matt Cartwright	D	Won	51.2%
TN-05	OPEN SEAT (Jim Cooper retired)	D	N/A	N/A
WI-03	OPEN SEAT (Ron Kind retired)	D	N/A	N/A

Skewed representation in states

National partisan representation appears almost “balanced” — our “default” lower-confidence projection (an environment in which 50% of voters prefer Democrats and 50% prefer Republicans) is 209 Republican seats, 201 Democratic ones, and 25 toss-up seats. A party must win 218 seats to capture the majority. 

But balance does not equal fairness, and it masks a troubling lack of representation and competition within states. In other words, with both Democrats and Republicans maximizing gerrymanders and geographic advantages in the states they control, the final national results may come out close to even — but voters’ voices have nothing to do with it. 

For example, maps in Connecticut and Oklahoma both produced one-party delegations in the 2022 midterms. But 40% of Connecticut residents vote Republican, and 30% of Oklahomans vote Democratic. With five seats in each state, any fair seat allocation in either state would include representatives of both parties.

The Fair Representation Act

The Fair Representation Act breaks us free from “monopoly politics.” It restores meaningful choice and real representation for voters by combining fewer district lines with a fair voting system: proportional ranked choice voting. 

Under the Fair Representation Act (FRA), we would elect multiple congresspeople from each district, and districts would be geographically larger. Districts would elect three, four, or five congresspeople each, depending on the number of representatives allocated to each state. 

For example, the FRA would transform Texas’s map from 38 single-member districts into eight multi-winner districts. 

And the FRA would transform Connecticut from five districts that all elect congresspeople of the same party to one statewide five-member district that would be likely to elect both Democrats and Republicans. 

Find sample maps for other states here.

Proportional RCV in multi-member districts would preserve majority rule and also ensure a fair number of seats for minority factions. It would drastically decrease the impact of gerrymandering and improve representation for women and people of color. Every district would be competitive in the general election, nearly all districts would have “crossover representatives,” and lawmakers would have new incentives to collaborate. 

Methodology

Our predictions are based on three simple components, which we calculate for each congressional district, making up our final equation. 

Projected Winning % = District Partisanship + Incumbent Modifier + National Partisan Swing

District Partisanship is the amount by which a district favors Democrats or Republicans. It is calculated by taking the difference between the vote margin in the district and the national vote margin from the most recent presidential election, based on the assumption that the presidential election is a better measure of statewide sentiment than any single congressional district.

District Partisanship = 50% + (District vote margin – National vote margin) / 2

For example, in Alabama’s first district, we compare the district’s vote share for the Democrat in the 2020 presidential election (-28.58%, meaning Biden trailed Trump by 28.58 points) to the national Democratic margin (4.54%, meaning Biden beat Trump nationally by this amount).  

District Partisanship_AL-01 = 50% + (-28.58%  -4.54%) / 2

District Partisanship_AL-01 = 33.44% Democratic vote share

Therefore, a two-way race in Alabama’s first district heavily favors the Republican to win. In our predictions, District Partisanship functions as a base to which other modifiers are added. 

Incumbent Modifier accounts for the inherent electoral advantage enjoyed by incumbent candidates. The incumbent modifier includes a national incumbent bump and a measure called Performance Over Average Candidate (POAC). 

Incumbent Modifier = National Incumbent Bump + POAC

National Incumbent Bump is estimated at 1.3% for 2024 based on the overall declining trend illustrated in the section on incumbency. This 1.3% is applied to every incumbent who is seeking re-election.

Performance Over Average Candidate (POAC) scores represent an estimate of each candidate’s performance relative to what would be expected from a generic incumbent candidate of the same party. The POAC is calculated by comparing a winner’s margin to the district partisanship. 

2022 POAC = District Partisanship – Performance of Generic Incumbent

2022 POAC = District Partisanship – Incumbent’s vote share – National Incumbent Bump

For example, Representative Mary Peltola is running for reelection in Alaska’s at-large district. The district partisanship in Peltola’s district is 42.5% Democratic, so a generic Democrat is expected to earn 42.5% and a Democratic incumbent should earn 43.8%. In 2022, Peltola earned 55% of the two-party vote, overperforming by 11.2%. Mary Peltola’s 2022 POAC is 11.2%.

Our overall POAC for each incumbent is the weighted average of their POAC from their most recent three contested elections. We privilege more recent elections with higher weights, hypothesizing that those elections more accurately reflect the current opinions of the district’s voters than those in the past. 

Incumbent ran in 3 previous elections:

POAC = 0.6*POAC₁ + 0.3*POAC₂ + 0.1*POAC₃

Incumbent ran in 2 previous elections:

POAC = 0.75*POAC₁ + 0.25*POAC₂

Incumbent ran in 1 previous election:

POAC = POAC₁

Finally, National Partisan Swing is a variable representing the average advantage of being either a Democrat or Republican in the upcoming year. Our default projection assumes a 50-50 partisan year so the default national partisan swing is 0. In our interactive web content, users can input values for national partisan swing ranging from +5 Republican to +5 Democrat. 

Our confidence levels are determined by the projected margin of victory. Safe seats are those with a 12-percentage-point margin or greater. “Leaning” seats are those with a projected margin between 6 points and 12 points. Seats with a projected margin of less than 6 points are classified as “toss up”. 

For our high-confidence projections, we only include the “safe seats” (12-percentage-point margin or greater) and exclude representatives in crossover districts.