U.S. House results can be predicted with 98% accuracy – two years in advance
FairVote predicted the results of all 2024 U.S. House races with 98% accuracy – two years in advance. At the same time, the “incumbency advantage” has fallen to a record low – U.S. House incumbents performed just 1.1 percentage points better than non-incumbents, controlling for other factors.
These findings demonstrate just how much partisanship is the defining factor in election outcomes, rather than local issues, candidate quality, or campaign quality. It’s a problem reflected in the 72% of Americans who say our democracy isn’t working, and a problem the Fair Representation Act (FRA) would help solve.
Monopoly Politics: Over before it begins
After every congressional election, FairVote predicts the outcomes of the next congressional election – two years ahead of time. FairVote makes these predictions in a report we call “Monopoly Politics.” For 25 years, Monopoly Politics has forecast U.S. House results with astounding accuracy.
This year, FairVote made 360 “high-confidence” projections with 100% accuracy. When we look at the whole House, our predictions were correct for 425 out of the 435 seats (98%).
We projected not only who would win each seat, but also by how much. The accuracy is demonstrated below:
Our predictions rely on the simple partisanship of each district (see the full methodology here). That is to say, a district’s voting history is the best indicator of whether it will vote red or blue in the future. This logic may sound intuitive, but it has dismal implications for democracy.
The accuracy of our predictions demonstrates that most House elections are deeply uncompetitive, and that partisanship is the single most important factor in deciding House election outcomes. Due to both gerrymandering and geography, most districts are safely Republican or Democratic, meaning candidates do not have to seriously campaign for votes in the general election. In fact, 62 million eligible voters live in districts that are safe for the party they oppose, and are therefore essentially locked out of representation.
Furthermore, because simple partisanship almost completely drives election results, other factors that arguably should be important – like local issues and candidate quality – often don’t affect the result.
The incumbency bump is now just a “bump-let”
Incumbency advantage hit an all-time low this year, after hovering at about six points through the 2000s and beginning a sharp fall in 2010.
In 2024, U.S. House incumbents earned a boost of just 1.1 percentage points compared to non-incumbents. This provides further evidence that national partisanship is becoming more important than local issues and experience.
Ending the monopoly
The Fair Representation Act would end “monopoly politics” by instituting multi-member U.S. House districts and elect representatives with proportional ranked choice voting (RCV). Multiple Republicans and Democrats would compete in each House race, which would give general election voters meaningful choices and force candidates to campaign on more than just their party label.
We projected that, under our current election system, only 28 House seats (6%) would be “toss-ups” in 2024 – and our lower-confidence projections were still correct for 19 of these. When we drew sample congressional maps for the FRA, we found that most districts would contain a “toss-up” seat.
Though “Monopoly Politics” has proven effective at predicting results, we hope for a day where Monopoly Politics is no more. The FRA could nullify the monotonous predictability of House elections, and make all House elections meaningful and representative.
