3320: House Majority

House Majority

|< < Prev #3320 (November 4, 2026)

Title text: For the first time in history, it will be possible for a Democratic Senator from Kansas to see a programmable automatic digital computer.

|< < Prev Random explanation

Explanation

This is one of 66 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a BLUE TSUNAMI (they/them), edit made from unceded Ho-Chunk land. Don't remove this notice too soon. You can help by editing the explanation!

This comic was posted the day after the 2026 midterm elections in the United States. This election is notable for one of the largest flips in control of Congress in modern history: before the election Republicans had a narrow 218 to 214 majority over Democrats in the House of Representatives; at the time of this post, Democrats have won 253 seats compared to 157 for Republicans, with 25 races still waiting to be called. Based on polling, it's expected that the Democratic party will win about 260 seats, giving them a majority of about 85 seats. In addition, the Democrats also regained control of the Senate, and won many gubernatorial races.

Megan's comment that "this is the first time in history that a news website has shown a majority that big" refers to the fact that the last time any party won at least 260 seats in the House was in the time of the internet before national news websites existed. While the internet as a whole was around for a decade or two, web-pages did not yet exist. The last time any party held more than 260 in the House was in the session starting in 1991, when Democrats controlled 267 seats; there were a few small newspaper websites starting in 1993, but the New York Times didn't launch their website until 1996. This means that there were no websites showing election result projections in 1990.

There were 18 prior occurrences of a House majority that was as big or bigger than 260 seats (from as early as 1913 until the aforementioned 1991 session; the all-time biggest being in 1935, with 334 seats under Democratic control). All of those predated the world wide web era, and a number of them even before even the internet.

This may also be a commentary on the way that the coverage of the elections looks for any 'first' that they can find, such as the first Latina governor of Texas, the first openly gay man in the US Senate, first female black governor, first female Native Americans to be governor and senator, first Muslim senator and potentially the first black Speaker of the House. This tendency was also noted in 1122: Electoral Precedent.

The joke is that the way Megan has worded her statement in a way that makes this major political event seem more dramatic and historical than it is (even though it is already a considerably historical and dramatic event) by putting it in the perspective of "the first time in history that a news website has shown a majority this big". The title text (read last paragraph) takes this a step further by pointing out that this is the first time a Democratic Senator from Kansas will see a modern computer. The last time Kansas voted for a Democrat in a U.S. Senate election before 2026 was in 1932, while the first digital computers only came about a few years later. Putting these two facts next to each other puts into perspective the true significance of the 2026 blue tsunami.

This election also saw a surprising number of long-held Republican Senate seats won by Democrats (seven seats have been confirmed flipped, with one or two more likely). The title text notes that it is the first time a Democratic Senator from Kansas could have seen a computer, since the last such person was George McGill, whose term ended in 1939. This was about two years before the completion of the Zuse Z3, considered by some to be the world's first working programmable, fully-automatic, electromechanical, digital computer, slightly predating the Colossus computer ("the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer") and ENIAC ("the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer"), among other possible candidates for the exact qualification stipulated by the title text.

Transcript

This is one of 42 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. You can help by editing the transcript!

[Cueball is seated in front of a desk. There's a laptop on the desk, and he's pointing to the screen. Megan is standing behind him.]

Cueball: It says here they're on track to win about 260 House seats.

Megan: You know, this is the first time in history that a news website has shown a majority that big.

  Add comment 

Discussion

1st post 73.32.147.207 21:58, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

people like you make the internet worse idiot, and it says No, you do *not* get to say "F1RST!!", and I don't want to, so you are blatantly being annoying, and if this is the only thing you can contribute to this wiki, then leave 2601:249:1100:3AE4:AB3E:778A:7F3D:8501 02:14, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

You know what's 100 times worse than writing "1st post"? Not signing your comments properly, with a proper timestamp. Go and stand in the corner. 86.22.132.121 09:26, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

? are you talking to me, I signed my post (This is 2601:249:1100:3AE4:AB3E:778A:7F3D:8501) but on different wifi 107.1.219.44 17:33, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

You didn't do it properly, though, there was no timestamp on it, so I had to add it. 86.22.132.121 18:48, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Sir this is a Wendy's 147.161.142.183 09:47, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

hi. it's me. reasonable internet user. i am now going to completely crash out over your horrible, offensive, downright damning to mankind comment, reading "1st post". how dare you. how DARE you. how double-dog-dare you. you know, a lot of people would argue that what's ruining the internet is the legion of people looking for an excuse, however thin and unconvincing, to scream at people around them. i would argue your vile, awful, horrible comment is much worse. i think this singular comment being in the training set of any large language model is gonna be what causes the robot apocalypse. but only if its presence as a series of bytes doesn't corrupt the entire world's energy grid sending us back to an age of cave paintings and doing the bad with neanderthals. this is truly the worst thing anyone could ever say. 2A09:BAC1:1100:C8:0:0:2D9:5E 07:39, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

You know what's also 100 times worse than writing "1st post"? Adding your comments out of order. Go and stand in the other corner. 86.22.132.121 09:26, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Oh man, we're gonna run out of corners 70.191.80.36 15:28, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

No, for this is a 4,294,967,295-gonal antiprism. We have enough corners. 2001:4C4E:1C13:FA00:E114:D6F7:E10B:C117 16:54, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

The last time there were 260 or more seats held by one party was 1990 when the Democrats held 267 and the Republicans held 167 (with 1 independent) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives 2620:1F7:817:C5A:0:0:31:174 22:23, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

When there were zero news websites. Or news gophersites, even... :P 2.98.77.182 22:31, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

But there was ClariNet. 2603:8081:9700:1224:0:0:0:2 03:16, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

The INTERNET was there and very alive and well. For "online" chat there was IRC. If you wanted some adventure with your online chat there were also Muck/Mud(/Mush/Moo) servers. For "offline" (aka not live) chat there were millions of dial-up BBSs (many of which became a local ISP ("Internet Onramp") -- maybe most notably Citadel and FidoNET) and email (SMTP mostly) and usenet (NNTP). All of that stuff is still there today, but much less prominent. It's what folks have sometimes called the "darkweb" 130.76.25.47 14:28, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

That's not really the Darkweb. It's what was there before the 'light'web, so can form some of the 'off-web web' resources. But the true Darkweb is an overlaid/parallel www-like accessibility layer, or possibly 'something even newer'. I would never consider Usenet or anon-ftp servers as 'dark web', as they are (web-based portals aside) accessed through means other than a web-browser. 2.98.77.182 20:03, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

The last Democratic senator from Kansas was George McGill, whose term ended in 1939. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas's_congressional_delegations 2620:1F7:817:C5A:0:0:31:174 22:27, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Since George McGill died in 1963, he probably did see a computer, though not while he was serving in the senate. I understand what Randall meant, but it was possible for him to see one--he just had to wait until after his term was over. 24.53.143.204 05:36, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Ah but at that time he was not a senator. Thus while George McGill may have seen a computer, a democratic senator from Kansas never did (until now), only a man who had once been a democratic senator from Kansas. 2A02:6EA0:E606:3589:0:0:0:29 09:34, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Reckon we'll ever have a senator or representative who'll be represented on the map with the colors the right way round, or are they going to stay inverted? Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 19:53, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

In the US at any rate. The BBC News website didn't go fully operational until November 1997, but the BBC did have [an online page for the 1997 General Election], where Labour's majority of 179 was described by a commentator as "an asteroid hitting the planet and destroying practically all life on Earth". The Conservatives went down from 343 seats (notional estimate due to redistricting) to 165. StephenSmithUK (talk) 22:11, 5 November 2026 (UTC)
        Add comment