Would it surprise you to learn that the Senate’s 46 Democrats got 20 million more votes than it’s 54

[kpete]

The Senate's 46 Democrats got 20 million more votes than its 54 Republicans

Updated by Dylan Matthews on January 3, 2015, 10:00 a.m. ET @dylanmatt [e-mail]

On Tuesday, 33 US senators elected in November will be sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden — including 12 who are new to the chamber. The class includes 22 Republicans and 11 Democrats, a big reason why the GOP has a 54-46 majority in the Senate overall.

But here's a crazy fact: those 46 Democrats got more votes than the 54 Republicans across the 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections.

According to Nathan Nicholson, a researcher at the voting reform advocacy group FairVote, "the 46 Democratic caucus members in the 114th Congress received a total of 67.8 million votes in winning their seats, while the 54 Republican caucus members received 47.1 million votes."

Here's what that looks like in chart form:

https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3tA5DxkuvO1yOmr9sBFd7LmlInM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2898306/Senate_votes_seats.0.png


story here:
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/3/7482635/senate-small-states

[Kalidurga]

1. not a real shocker vote wise

Republicans are mean and people really do get that.

[yeoman6987]

2. So what!!! California and New York add huge numbers

To Democratic numbers. Should we force those numbers to move to another state? Probably the biggest nonsense story of them all.

[Kalidurga]

5. maybe give them some incentive

although I can't think of anything that would get me to move to Texas or any other red state.

[JI7]

9. it's one reason Virginia is now a purple state and went blue in the last few elections

all the people who moved there.

[csziggy]

3. Isn't that the intent of gerrymandering?

Shape the districts so it takes fewer votes to get "their" side into office. Cjop up the opposition's voting blocs so they cannot get a majority.

And it's only going to get worse - too many states have a Republican majority in the state governments. The Republican dominated Congress and Supreme Court will do nothing to make this better. The DOJ has been doing some work, but there is only so much they can do especially when the Supreme Court guts the laws that are supposed to make every vote count.

[yeoman6987]

10. They are talking Senate!!!!!!!

[Bagsgroove]

4. The Senate was never intended to be "democratic"

The authors of our Constitution never intended the Senate to be a "democratic" institution. It was intended to be a balance against the House of Representatives (where states have representation in proportion to their population) and ensure that the interests of small states and rural regions would not be overwhelmed by the interests of large states and urban regions. It was one of many compromises needed to entice the less populated states to sign on to the 1787 Constitution.

The entire state of Wyoming has a population less than half the size of the city of San Diego, yet Wyoming has the same representation in the Senate as California.

It has nothing to do with gerrymandering. As the article states, the Senate is a profoundly un-democratic institution. The problem is that it was designed that way.

[Rex]

6. Evidently posting that is some kind of strange right wing dog whistle.

The hostility over simple statistics is a curious response imo.

[Hekate]

8. Strange days, strange days

[onenote]

14. its a rw dog whistle because folks are pointing out that this is an embarrassingly dumb statistic?

Just because its a statistic doesn't mean its immune from criticism and analysis.

Or does it?

[JI7]

7. no, many of the low population states lean republican

[hfojvt]

12. that's not what it is measuring though - see below

plus that's not even true.

Here's a list of the smallest states, in reverse order

Wyoming
Vermont
Alaska
ND
SD
Delaware
Montana
Rhode Island
New Hampshire
Maine

That appears to be a 5-5 split

The big states also seem to be evenly split

California
Texas
Florida
New York
Illinois
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Georgia
North Carolina
Michigan

With many of those states - Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan being fairly evenly split, and the other six are split 3-3 (although our top 3 are all in the top 5, and only one of theirs is - by electoral vote we win 107 to 64 with 85 being split but if they win Florida and Ohio that is split 47 to 38).

[hfojvt]

11. yes I had read that before, but missed a key

that's not even a valid comparison.

Because you are comparing Democrats who got elected in 2012 to Republicans who got elected in 2010 and 2014.

That's not apples to apples. Turnout is always higher in the Presidential year.

And of the 46 Democrats
25 were elected in 2012
11 in 2014
10 in 2010

of the 54 Republicans
8 were elected in 2012
22 in 2014
24 in 2010

So this is not even comparing big states to small states, it is comparing off year elections to Presidential elections.

In other words - it's bullsh*t

Just look at California
Boxer got elected in 2010 with 5.21 million votes
DiFi got elected in 2012 with 7.86 million votes

or look at Illinois
Kirk got elected in 2010 with 1.78 million votes
Durbin got elected in 2014 with 1.93 million votes

not the best example since Durbin got elected in 2008 with 3.52 million votes.

It's not undemocratic for Kirk to be a Senator just because Durbin is more popular, and it's even less undemocratic if you are comparing an off year election total to a Presidential year election total.

Wisconsin
Tammy Baldwin 1.55 million votes in 2012
Johnson 1.13 million votes in 2010

Yeah, it's too bad that Feingold couldn't have gotten another 110,000 Democrats to show up and vote in 2010, but elections are decided by the people who actually vote, not by the people who could have voted.

This article, now twice touted at DU with it's seeming message of "the whole system is rigged" just seems to be encouraging people - do not bother to vote.

I mean, why vote if the whole system is rigged anyway?

The great thing for us is, that both Johnson and Kirk should be vulnerable in 2016 if our party can get its act together and put forward decent candidates.

[onenote]

13. comparing totals of winners only is silly

Doing so gives more than 15 times the weight to Ted Cruz winning in Texas by a smaller percentage (16%) than is given to Hirono's victory in Hawaii (by 26%) because Cruz got 4.4 million votes and Hirono only got 260,000.

It would make more sense to compare number of votes cast for Democrats v. number of votes cast for Republicans (not just the number of votes for the winners). However, that comparison shows that in 2010 the repubs candidates (win or lose) got around 3 million more votes than the Democrats; same thing in 2014. On the other hand, riding the coattails of Obama's victory in 2012 (and the fact that there is always a higher turnout in presidential election years), and the fact that lopsided victories in NY and CA gave the Democrats 6 million more votes than repubs in just those two states, the Democratic candidates for Senate outpolled the repubs by nearly 10 million votes.

All of which merely proves that these are meaningless statistical gymnastics proving nothing.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. No, because California, New York, Illinois, etc. have very large populations.

That reliably vote Democrat.

[Cha]

16. No, I wouldn't be surprised.. I actually read that somewhere before DU today. It's sickening but

true. We're run by the minority teabaggers.. and the President is our Firewall.