In the United States we elect members of the House of Representative from single-member districts: the candidate who receives the most votes from each geographically defined district wins a seat in the House. This system—so long in place that it seems perfectly natural—is, however, unusual. Most countries use proportional representation to elect their legislatures. Electing the House is the first book-length study to explore how the US came to adopt the single-member district system, how it solidified into a seemingly permanent fixture of American government and whether it performs well by the standards it was intended to achieve. The US Constitution grants the states the authority to elect representatives in a manner of their own choosing, subject to restrictions that Congress might impose. Electing the House reminds us that in the nation's early years the states exercised this privilege and elected their representatives using a variety of methods. Dow traces the general adoption of the present system to the Jacksonian Era—specifically to the major franchise expansion and voter mobilization of the time. The single-member district plurality-rule system was the Federalists' solution to tyranny of the majority under the expectation of universal franchise, and the Jacksonian-Whigs–Era response to the political uncertainty caused by large-scale voter mobilization. The system was solidified concurrently with the enfranchisement of women in the early twentieth century and African Americans in the Civil Rights Era. Dow persuasively argues that the single-member district system became the way that we elect our representatives because it fits especially well within the corpus of political thought that informs our collective understanding of good governance and it performs well by the standards it was meant to achieve, and these standards are still relevant today. Locating the development of single-member district system within the context of American political thought, Dow's study clarifies the workings and the significance of a critical electoral process in our time. In the process, the book informs and enhances our understanding of the evolution of the American political system.

The first comprehensive study in more than forty years to explain congressional leadership selection How are congressional party leaders chosen? In the first comprehensive study since Robert Peabody's classic Leadership in Congress, political scientists Matthew Green and Douglas Harris draw on newly collected data about U.S. House members who have sought leadership positions from the 1960s to the present--data including whip tallies, public and private vote commitments, interviews, and media accounts--to provide new insights into how the selection process truly works. Elections for congressional party leaders are conventionally seen as a function of either legislators' ideological preferences or factors too idiosyncratic to permit systematic analysis. Analyzing six decades' worth of information, Harris and Green find evidence for a new comprehensive model of vote choice in House leadership elections that incorporates both legislators' goals and their connections with leadership candidates. This study will stand for years to come as the definitive treatment of a crucial aspect of American politics.

On 18th April 2017, Theresa May stunned Britain by announcing a snap election. With poll leads of more than 20 points over Jeremy Corbyn's divided Labour Party, the first Tory landslide since Margaret Thatcher's day seemed certain. Seven weeks later, Tory dreams had turned to dust. Instead of the 100-seat victory she'd been hoping for, May had lost her majority, leaving Parliament hung and her premiership hanging by a thread. Labour MPs, meanwhile, could scarcely believe their luck. Far from delivering the wipe-out that most predicted, Corbyn's popular, anti-austerity agenda won the party 30 seats, cementing his position as leader and denying May the right to govern alone. This timely and indispensable book gets to the bottom of why the Tories failed, and how Corbyn's Labour overcame impossible odds to emerge closer to power than at any election since the era of Tony Blair. Who was to blame for the Tories' mistakes? How could so many politicians and pollsters fail to see what was coming? And what was the secret of Corbyn's apparently unstoppable rise? Through new interviews and candid private accounts from key players, political journalists Tim Ross and Tom McTague set out to answer these questions and more, piecing together the inside story of this most dramatic and important of elections.