Chait Obscures Senate Situation
In an article entitled "Power From the People," Jonathan Chait of TNR raises some legitimate questions about the Bush administration’s policy decisions and priorities. However, he muddies the waters with a vague and ill-informed complaint about the lack of “balance” in the U.S. Senate.
Specifically, Chait laments the fact that “the Senate…gives the citizens in the 30 states Bush won in 2000, which comprise slightly less than half of the U.S. population, 60 seats. [While] The 20 states Gore won comprise a narrow majority of the population, but they get only 40 seats in the Senate.” In Chait’s view, if we were to “balance the scales…[then] the Senate would have a solid Democratic majority.”
There are a few factual problems with Chait’s claims. First, Chait implies that the states won by Gore in 2000 are reliably Democratic in their Senate representation and that the states won by Bush are (somewhat less) reliably Republican in their own Senate representation. But that picture is not really accurate.
Of the 20 states held by Gore in the 2000 general election, 12 (60%) have two Democratic senators. Of the 30 states held by Bush, 18 (60%) have two Republican senators. In other words, in a full 40% of all states, Senate representation does not correlate directly with the state’s choice for President.
Furthermore, an analysis of the population of states with “stolen” senators – i.e., Gore states with at least one Republican senator, and Bush states with at least one Democratic Senator – shows that, on average, Republican senators have infiltrated Democratic population centers more than Democratic senators have returned the favor. Republicans have elected senators in Pennsylvania and Illinois, two of the Democrats’ four most valuable electoral states. Democrats, in contrast, have elected senators in only one of Bush’s most valuable states – Florida.
The general statistics concerning "stolen senators" also indicate the GOP’s edge: the average Bush state with a Democratic senator has a population of 4.62 million, while the average Gore state with a Republican senator has a population of about 5.01 million. In other words, the states that the Republicans have "stolen" (with at least one Senator) are more populous than those "stolen" by the Democrats.
And so, Chait’s argument about the Senate fails on two fronts. First, since a state’s Presidential selection is not an accurate indicator of its Senate representation, it is not at all clear that a population-based Senate would result in “a solid Democratic majority” (as Chait argues). Moreover, given the Republicans’ comparative advantage in electing senators in populous Democratic (i.e. “Gore-voting”) states, it is quite likely that a population-based Senate would tilt more Republican than does the current Senate roster.
