1912, democrats won 290 House seats (2/3s exactly) with 43% of the total votes because of the split between the GOP and TR’s progressives, Woodrow Wilson won the White House with a huge EC majority despite just 42% of the popular vote. We could not survive a democrat supermajority Congress today.
As for Brat, that seat is safe, I am not worried about the rat candidate’s chances, so the allegations made in this blog don’t trouble me. I’m sure Brat will get many donations from across the country to fund his campaign.
I really don't understand how the RATs accomplished that on the congressional level since we are not a parliamentary system and the vote for Congress wasn't tied to the vote for President.
In order to similarly split the vote at the congressional level, the "Progressive Party" (a new third party created solely for Teddy Roosevelt's egotistical Presidential run, it wasn't related to previous "Progressive Party" campaigns in the U.S.) would have to slate candidates aligned to Teddy's ideals in each of the 435 congressional districts. Furthermore, the quality of the candidates themselves would ALSO have to mirror the presidential choices... if you had an extremely popular incumbent Republican congressman up for re-election against a weak Dem and a no-name, underfunded "Progressive" candidate, its unlikely the Progressive candidate would get the same % of people who pulled the lever for Teddy to do the same for him, and its very likely the Republican candidate for Congress would outperform Taft at the top of the ticket. Also, in 1912, there were numerous areas of the country that were 1 party Republican and simply never had any RATs on ballot (ironically, most of those places, like Vermont, are now safe Dem)
If anything, I would have assumed the Republicans did well in Congressional races in 1912 because they're usually straight Republican vs. Democrat races, and most Wilson voters would vote RAT, while most Taft voters and a plurality of Teddy voters would pick the "R" over the "D" in a two way race.
In short, I'm shocked the RATS did so well on the congressional level.