Share this page!

Stephen Wolf Profile picture
Twitter logo
23 Feb, 13 tweets, 6 min read
NEW: We calculated 3 decades of the Senate "popular vote" & how many people each party represented. The results are astonishing: The GOP hasn't won more votes or represented more people than Dems since the 1990s but has run the Senate > half the time since dailykos.com/stories/2021/2…
GOP minority rule is a defining feature of what's wrong with American politics, & no institution has it worse than the Senate. Dems represent tens of millions more people & won millions more votes but won the same number of seats as GOP in 2020. Minority rule could return in 2022
From 2000-2006 & 2014-2020, Senate GOP owed its majorities to minority rule. The results are far-reaching: A majority of 5 SCOTUS justices were confirmed by GOP senates elected with less support than Dems. Those justices have since undermined voting rights & upheld gerrymandering
Given the tendency of the president's party to lose seats in midterms, there's a strong risk that Dems will lose the Senate in 2022. The GOP could once again regain control of the Senate despite winning fewer votes & representing fewer people than Dems
GOP minority rule in the Senate is in large part a result of how the GOP gerrymandered the upper chamber in the 19th Century by admitting several lightly populated, heavily white rural states in the northwest, including splitting the Dakota territory in two for more senators
When the Senate was originally created, the largest state had 13 times as many people as the smallest state, but the gap is now 68 times today. Malapportionment may only grow worse in coming decades as the U.S. population becomes increasingly concentrated in several big states
Fortunately, there's a solution at hand that would modestly reduce the Senate's huge bias toward rural white Republicans: Ending the disenfranchisement of 4 million U.S. citizens by granting statehood to D.C. & Puerto Rico. Dems could pass it if they curtail the Senate filibuster
However, even adding D.C. & Puerto Rico as new states would still leave the Senate with a major overrepresentation of rural white Republicans. In the long-term, more transformative solutions will be needed to prevent a return of frequent GOP minority rule fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-s…
You can find all of our data calculations & a methodology statement explaining how we arrived at these conclusions in this spreadsheet. Senate vote totals from 1990-2021 are from the invaluable @uselectionatlas: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
GOP minority rule is only growing worse. If the GOP had won just ~40,000 more votes for president, 1,000 more votes for Senate (NH 2016), & hadn't lost key redistricting lawsuits last decade, they'd have won the presidency, Senate, & House in 2020 despite millions more Dem votes
Last tweet in this thread: Via @leedrutman, the Senate for many decades has overrepresented Republicans (& conservative Southern Dems before that). Senate GOP has rarely ever represented more people than Dems since 1980 but has won power many times since fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-s…
The Washington Post's @pbump did an additional analysis of our new data on the Senate "popular vote," including new graphs showing how frequently the GOP has won control of the Senate since the 1990s despite Dems winning more votes overall washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…
Relevant to this thread on how the Senate massively over-represents Republicans. Curtailing the filibuster to admit new states such as D.C. is critical to rebalancing the Senate & restoring democratic majority rule (along with passing new voting reforms)

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Stephen Wolf

Stephen Wolf Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @PoliticsWolf

Stephen Wolf Profile picture
19 Feb
.@DKElections presents the 2020 presidential results by congressional district! As shown on these maps, Biden won 224 districts to Trump's 211. The median seat was #IL14, which Biden won by 50-48, meaning Trump could've lost the popular vote by 2% & still won a majority of seats
The 2016 presidential results for the congressional districts in use in 2020 saw Trump win the median seat by 2% despite losing overall by 2%, meaning the GOP had a 4% advantage over the popular vote. That advantage fell in half in 2020, but GOP gerrymandering remains a threat
Republicans are poised to draw 2-3 times as many congressional districts as Dems after 2020, & SCOTUS could make GOP gerrymandering worse within states. GOP gerrymandering will remain a major problem in the 2020s & beyond if congressional Dems don't ban it dailykos.com/story/2020/11/…
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
18 Feb
In state after state, Republicans are moving to restrict ballot initiatives after they’ve been used to enact progressive policies & pro-democracy reforms. This is part of the same broader effort to restrict voting access so that only Republicans are able to govern
Arizona voting advocates had tried to use a ballot initiative in 2020 to adopt automatic & same-day voter registration, expanded public financing, & more. The pandemic & AZ's GOP-packed Supreme Court stopped them from getting enough signatures, but they could try again this cycle
Arizona is hardly the only state where the GOP has restricted ballot initiatives or is trying to after voters passed democracy reforms/progressive initiatives. The same thing happened in AR, FL, ID, ME, MI, MO, ND, SD, & UT in just the last several years dailykos.com/stories/2019/7…
Read 5 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
12 Feb
This will wreak havoc with redistricting timelines. Many states have constitutionally mandated deadlines for drawing new districts before then & are likely to face litigation over them. Some could even see legislatures lose control over the process to courts & backup commissions
⬇️ The delay means we’re more likely to see redistricting blitzkriegs where partisan mapmakers wait until the last minute to release proposed maps before passing them, giving the public little time to mobilize against flawed or outright bad maps
More news related to the delayed release of the census' reapportionment and redistricting data
Read 9 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
27 Jan
This could mean that the release of population data at the census block level, which is what is used in redistricting itself, may not be released until after April 30. That could cause serious problems for states whose constitutions mandate redistricting deadlines weeks afterward
It appears highly likely that New Jersey will use its current legislative maps for 2021 & won't redistrict their legislature until 2023. Virginia may end up doing the same for November. Several other states with early summer deadlines for redistricting could be thrown into chaos
The census delaying the release of redistricting data this year is a good reason why states should change their redistricting deadlines to make them more flexible in similar future situations, but amending state constitutions is a lengthy process, & it's too late to do so by 2022
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
22 Jan
5 of 14 New Hampshire GOP state senators have introduced a bill that would gerrymander the state's Electoral College votes by assigning them by gerrymandered congressional district. GOP legislators proposed this same scheme this month in MI & WI too gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/bi…
In a 4th state, the GOP is proposing *ending* the allocation of electoral votes congressional district: Nebraska, where Biden won the 2nd District & its one electoral vote.

GOP could pass these power grabs in NE & NH now, but MI & WI depend on GOP winning 2022 governors' races
An important point: These GOP Electoral College manipulation schemes aren't even guaranteed to help the GOP, & so much of it is just a knee-jerk reaction to the specific manner of Biden's 2020 win. But eventually, the GOP may get smarter about these power grabs & actually do it
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
20 Jan
Today, we restored majority rule by inaugurating a Democratic president & Senate majority that won with millions more votes than the GOP. It's been 4 straight years of GOP minority rule in the White House combined with 6 straight years of GOP minority rule in the Senate
But don't ignore how close we came to total GOP minority rule.

Had Trump won just 42,921 more votes, the Senate GOP won just 1,018 more votes, & GOP not lost anti-gerrymandering lawsuits last decade, they'd have held the White House, Senate, & House despite millions fewer votes
American democracy survived the Trump era, but not because it's resilient. We barely scraped by, & the threat of far-right authoritarianism is far from over when GOP leaders of all stripes tell the Big Lie with impunity that the 2020 election was stolen.

We have much work to do
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @PoliticsWolf has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @PoliticsWolf!

Read all threads by @PoliticsWolf