Unusually high amount of special House elections?

[Meeker]

We're going to have at least 11 this Congress - is that on par or above average?

[phk]

We're going to have at least 11 this Congress - is that on par or above average?

Find me the amount of special elections going back to 1960 and I can give you a 95% CL.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_special_elections_to_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives

[Meeker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_special_elections_to_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives

Thanks. The answer to my question from a brief scan of that appears to be yes

[RBH]

I think the 1989/1990 total had a few November 1990 special elections too.

[Padfoot]

Glancing at that list I can't help but notice the number of untimely deaths on it.  Several died rather unexpectedly and a couple had announced plans to retire at the end of this Congress.  Very sad.

On a related note, have there been more deaths during this congress than average?

[phk]

Special Elections since 1st Congress.

n = 110 observations
mean = 13.04545
standard deviation = 5.445959
min = 2
max = 27


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special_El~s |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
       _cons |   13.04545   .5192518    25.12   0.000     12.01631    14.07459
------------------------------------------------------------------------------