Republicans held a 4.3-point national popular vote lead in U.S. House races as of Noon on Wednesday (51.4% to 47.1%) despite only picking up somewhere between 8 and 11 seats.
How that’s possible is partly reflected in New Jersey’s results.
In the Garden State, New Jersey Republicans picked up one seat on an extremely pro-Democrat gerrymandered map which took three other seats out of competitive contention. Republican candidates won 40%+ of the statewide popular vote but took only 25% of the seats.
The big winner for “most votes received by a victor” goes to four-decade House veteran Chris Smith (R, NJ-04) whose redrawn deep-red Jersey Shore district turned out huge for him. Smith is currently ahead by nearly 36-points with 170,337 votes.
At the other end of the spectrum? Safely-reelected Democrats in more urban areas didn’t pull as many votes. Newly elected Robert Menendez (the son of the senator) won with just 73,765 in a district which includes pieces of Newark, Jersey City, and Elizabeth.
Meanwhile, over in NJ-09, Bill Pascrell (D) fetched 78,465 to his GOP opponent’s 63,652. That’s a relatively close scrape for a “blue” district Democrat.
So the story of the Democrats’ popular vote loss (about 12 million less raw votes than they received across all 50 states in 2018) is in part explained by weak turnout for Democrats in deep blue urban districts. The Democrats also created less competitive districts in many blue states (like New Jersey) and, in so doing, gave their voters less reason to turn out in cycles without a statewide contest acting as a draw.
