Cantor’s Historic House Election Defeat: By the Numbers

Eric Cantor’s historic election loss, with voters in his Virginia district unseating the second-most powerful leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, can be read in a series of odds-defying numbers.

The first is Zero: The number of times a member of Congress of Cantor’s rank had been defeated in a primary before yesterday. Since the post of House majority leader was created in 1899, its occupant had won 55 straight renomination bids, as University of Minnesota political analyst Eric Ostermeier detailed in a blog posting.