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Does anyone know where I can find figures for the total votes cast by party in the US 2018 House elections? I've been unable to locate them.

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    The votes are still being counted. 10 races are not even decided yet.
    – default locale
    Nov 12, 2018 at 14:47
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    Popular vote is a misnomer. Voting rules, weather conditions, the prevalence of the state's majority party, the effects of using caucuses instead of written primaries, the proximity to Washington D.C., the state's literacy rate, the state's incarceration rate, and many many other things make it impossible to obtain an apples-to-apples comparison of nationwide Republican votes vs. Democratic votes.
    – elliot svensson
    Nov 12, 2018 at 16:30
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    @elliotsvensson I disagree that those invalidate the comparison. I'm interested in the figures in any case. And I'd be happy with interim figures.
    – DJClayworth
    Nov 12, 2018 at 18:02
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    One complication is that one district this year is using ranked-choice voting (Maine, 2nd district). They have already counted first-choice votes, but there was no clear winner, so second and third choices are being counted. Does the OP want only first-choice votes counted?
    – user15103
    Nov 12, 2018 at 20:55
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    @Joe Don't really care about that either. Unlikely to make a big impact on the numbers.
    – DJClayworth
    Nov 13, 2018 at 1:15

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We don't yet know the actual final results, as there are still some races that are actively being counted. This page on The Green Papers has all the publicly announced Unofficial numbers collected in one place. 

Democrat      - 54,375,285 (51.98%)
Republican    - 48,571,844 (46.43%)
Other Parties -  1,667,746 ( 1.58%)

These numbers will probably change in the next week or two as official tallies are released, but they're probably accurate to within 50,000 of the final numbers. (Warning: gut feeling estimate, not based on any research.)

For comparison purposes, here's links for the for the 2016 House elections by party (presidential year), and the 2014 House results (Midterms).

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  • How does this handle races where both the candidates are the same party? E.g. there is some reason to think that Republicans have been voting for DeLeon in California as a protest against Feinstein. That artificially inflates the Democrats and leaves Republicans artificially low. How many similar elections are in the House with a similar effect? Also, how many urban House elections show no Republican voters because the Democrat was unopposed?
    – Brythan
    Nov 13, 2018 at 0:31
  • Not sure how DeLeon v Feinstein in the California Senate has an effect on House elections.
    – DJClayworth
    Nov 13, 2018 at 1:12
  • @Brythan If you look at CA6 or CA9, you can see that it counts votes for either candidate as a vote for that party. And there is no such thing as artificially inflated or low for a party in these records - it doesn’t matter if half the Democrats and all the Republicans voted for one candidate (or the reverse) - it’s the number of actual votes received that is reported on, not voters party affiliations.
    – Bobson
    Nov 13, 2018 at 4:20
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    Sorry, CA 6 (two Democrats) or CA 8 (two Republicans). It also explicitly notes "This tally may exclude results for uncontested contests." In general, you really don't want to extrapolate from voting results to how many people belong to a given party, because you'd have to account for crossover voters, ticket splitters, tactical voters going for not-their-first-choice, percentage of voters voting vs registered, etc.
    – Bobson
    Nov 13, 2018 at 6:29
  • That point (not for extrapolation to party support) should probably be made in the answer, not hidden in a comment.
    – Brythan
    Nov 13, 2018 at 23:55

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