Originally posted on October 4, 2020
Within a number of states the Republicans have an edge in their representation due to gerrymandering. Nationally the Republicans have about a 5% edge in representation due to each state, regardless of population, having two senators along with the subsequent electoral college makeup.
Right now in the Senate there are 54 Republicans and 46 Democrats (or independents who caucus with one of the parties). You might expect, in any reasonable democracy, that those 54 Republicans were elected by a majority of the voters. Almost needless to say, you’d be wrong.
I went through all 100 current senators and tallied up their vote counts from their last election. The 46 Democratic senators received 66,328,155 votes while the 54 Republican senators received just 54,938,938 votes.
So not only are the Republicans slowly making the U.S. a worse place to live, they are doing it with a minority of the population. I generally try to be optimistic, but at some point the majority will get tired of this. Whether it stays peaceful is an open question.