"The line “the American people chose divided government” is especially interesting. It’s not really a good way to describe what happened during the elections; the number of congressional districts that split their votes for president and for Congress appears to have reached historic lows. And more people voted for Democratic representatives than for Republican ones, which, while it doesn’t have any concrete consequences, does cast doubt on the idea that Americans as a whole wanted divided government. American government is divided not because many Americans voted for divided government, but because Americans were rather closely split between two factions with firm allegiance to one party or the other. That Republicans came away with a solid majority in the House despite losing the popular vote is in large measure due to effective gerrymandering in the post-2010 census redistricting, and to the fact that Democratic voters are increasingly clustered in overwhelmingly Democratic urban districts, leaving them with more wasted votes."