Some numbers on the Senate
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2021 4:59 pm
I knew this but had not seen the numbers. Ian Millheiser has run them on Vox.xom.
His spreadsheet is here.America’s anti-democratic Senate, in one number
41,549,808.
Well, it’s official. Georgia Democratic Senators-elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are going to Washington. The Senate will be evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. That means that, with Democratic Vice President-elect Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote, Democrats will have the narrowest possible majority in the Senate.
If the Senate were anything approaching a democratic institution, however, the Democratic Party would have a commanding majority in Congress’s upper house. The Senate is malapportioned to give small states like Wyoming exactly as many senators as large states like California — even though California has about 68 times as many residents as Wyoming.
Because smaller states tend to be whiter and more conservative than larger states, this malapportionment gives Republicans an enormous advantage in the fight for control of the Senate. Once Warnock and Ossoff take their seats, the Democratic half of the Senate will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.
I derived this number by using 2019 population estimates from the United States Census Bureau. In each state where both senators belong to the same party, I allocated the state’s entire population to that party. In states with split delegations, I allocated half of the state’s population to each party. I coded Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Angus King (I-ME) as Democrats. Although both men identify as independents, they caucus with the Democratic Party.
It’s worth highlighting just how much of an advantage Republicans derive from Senate malapportionment. In the 25 most populous states, Democratic senators will hold a 29-21 seat majority once Warnock and Ossoff are sworn in. Republicans, meanwhile, have an identical 29-21 majority in the 25 least populous states.