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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. A new poll suggests many Americans may be more open to major changes in the U.S. electoral system than previously thought, including expanding the House of Representatives by 150 seats and adopting a form of proportional representation.
But despite the headline-grabbing results, experts say such reforms remain politically unlikely in the near future.
The survey, conducted by Fix Our House, New America and Verasight , found that 54 percent of respondents supported adding 150 members to the House, while 50 percent said they supported proportional representation—an electoral system in which parties win seats roughly in line with their share of the vote.
While the findings indicate an openness to reform, they don’t necessarily mean such changes are imminent.
The U.S. House has been capped at 435 voting members since 1929 , even as the nation's population has grown from about 123 million in 1930 to more than 331 million in 2020.
As a result, each House member now represents far more people than lawmakers did a century ago.
Supporters of the expansion. such as political scientist Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at New America who studies Congress and electoral reform, argue that adding seats could make congressional districts smaller and provide voters with more direct representation. The poll found majority support for an increase of 150 seats, which would bring the House to 585 members.
Congress has the authority to change the size of the House through legislation, but doing so would require political consensus that has been absent for decades.
Most House elections currently use single-member districts in which the candidate receiving the most votes wins the seat.
Under proportional representation, larger districts would elect several lawmakers at once, with seats allocated based on each party's share of the vote. A party winning 40 percent of the vote in a district, for example, would receive roughly 40 percent of the seats.
Advocates such as political scientists Moon Duchin and Gabe Schoenbach argue that such a system would reduce gerrymandering, the practice of drawing electoral district boundaries to favor one political party, and allow voters whose preferred candidates lose under the current winner-take-all system to still gain representation.
Earlier this year, hundreds of democracy and legal experts signed a letter urging Congress to consider proportional representation as a response to concerns over redistricting and electoral fairness.
It could change, but does not always do so in predictable ways.
A proportional system would likely make congressional results more closely reflect national voting patterns. Under the current system of single-member congressional districts, a party can sometimes win a larger or smaller share of House seats than its nationwide vote share might suggest because of district boundaries and the geographic distribution of voters.
Under proportional representation, both Republicans and Democrats would probably find it harder to secure large majorities from relatively narrow election victories. Instead, Congress could become more fragmented, with smaller parties gaining representation if election laws allowed them to compete effectively.
Some reform advocates argue that this could reduce political polarization by encouraging coalition-building. The poll found that a majority of respondents were receptive to the idea of multiple parties working together in government rather than one party governing alone.
However, there is no guarantee proportional representation would consistently benefit either major party. Electoral systems often produce outcomes that depend on voter behavior, party organization and the specific rules used to allocate seats.
Despite the poll's findings, proportional representation remains a long shot.
Most Americans are still unfamiliar with the concept. According to the survey, only about 2 percent of respondents could name proportional representation unprompted, and only about a quarter said they had heard much about alternatives to the current congressional election system.
Any move toward proportional representation would require sweeping legislative changes and would face resistance from elected officials who succeeded under the existing system.
Expanding the House alone would likely spark debates over costs, congressional operations and the redistribution of political power among states.
While the poll doesn’t confirm that major changes to congressional elections are likely in the near future, it does indicate that voters are frustrated with political polarization and that the two-party system may be increasingly open to electoral reforms that have traditionally remained outside of the political mainstream.
Whether that sentiment translates into actual policy change remains an open question.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton and James Debens
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