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Americans woke up on November 7 having elected a Democratic president, expanded the Democratic majority in the Senate, and preserved the Republican majority in the House.

That's not what they voted for, though. Most Americans voted for Democratic representation in the House. As of now it looks as if Democrats have a slight edge in the popular vote for House seats, 49 percent-48.2 percent, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Still, as the Post's Aaron Blake notes, the 233-195 seat majority the GOP will likely end up with represents the GOP's "second-biggest House majority in 60 years and their third-biggest since the Great Depression."

So how did Republicans keep their House majority despite more Americans voting for the other party—something that has only happened three times in the last hundred years, according to political analyst Richard Winger? Because they drew the lines.

After Republicans swept into power in state legislatures in 2010, the GOP gerrymandered key states, redrawing House district boundaries to favor Republicans. In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates received half of the votes in House contests, but Republicans will claim about three-quarters of the congressional seats. The same is true in North Carolina. More than half the voters in that state voted for Democratic representation, yet Republicans will fill about 70 percent of the seats. Democrats drew more votes in Michigan than Republicans, but they'll take only 5 out of the state's 14 congressional seats.



"Not only did redistricting make it easier for Republicans to keep control of Congress this election," Sundeep Iyer and his colleague Keesha Gaskins wrote at the Brennan Center's website, "but it also may have made it easier for them to keep control over the next decade." More at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/republicans-gerrymandering
-house-representatives-election-chart

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This demonstrates that gerrymandering can have a deleterious effect on the principle of democratic accountability. With uncompetitive seats/districts reducing the fear that incumbent politicians may lose office, they have less incentive to represent the interests of their constituents, even when those interests conform to majority support for an issue across the electorate as a whole. Incumbent politicians may look out more for their party's interests than for those of their constituents.

However, Wiki also says that

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Instead of gerrymandering, researchers find that other factors, such as partisan polarization and the incumbency advantage, have driven the recent decreases in electoral competition.

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That may be true; I may be biased, partly because it was such a huge (and effective) effort on Republicans' part, partly because it has SO destroyed democratic priniciples and will continue to do so for so long, and part because I'm pissed at the Democrats for not paying attention to what they were doing. I can't say. But as far as I know, it's one of, if not THE, most enormous such effort our country has known.