Republicans captured 49.4{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} of the two-party vote for Congress in 2012, yet won 54{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} of the seats in the House.

This gap between the Republican vote and the seats they won is on the high side, but certainly not without precedent over the past 40 years.

If you began your career as a Republican trying to win the House in the 1970s and 1980s, you would adopt, as I do, the borrowed adage “there’s no crying in redistricting.”

This document provides 40 years of history about the difference between votes cast and seats won, and puts the 2012 election result in a broader perspective.