A Senate Thought Experiment
Posted by Sean Trende | Email This | Permalink | Email Author
James Fallows has an interesting link for what the Senate would look like if it were apportioned by population, from "fake is the new real."
As near as I can tell, the answer is that we'd have a Senate with an even greater Republican skew than the present Senate. California would get twelve Senate seats, but by confining LA and the greater San Francisco area to their own districts, which would have gone about 70% for Obama each, they create some pretty Republican districts. "Orange," "Mojave" and "San Joaquin" would probably be pretty strongly Republican (I'm less certain about San Joaquin -- a lot would depend on precisely where the boundary lines lay), and Coronado would be a swing district. In a good Republican year, California will generally give Democrats 2 Democrats out of 2. In a good Republican year, you'd get four Democrats and potentially eight Republicans here.
Besides Willamette and Olympia, I'm not sure any "state" west of the Mississippi would reliably -- or even potentially -- produce Democratic Senators; east of the Mississippi you're potentially looking at Everglades, Potomac, Chicago, North Coast, Detroit, New York, Jersey, Boston, Southern New England, maybe Long Island, Maybe N. New England and maybe Philly, the Delta, and Pamlico as sources for Democratic votes.
The dirty little secret is that (1) the Republicans' small state advantage in the Senate is overstated and (2) the Democrats' concentration in cities actually helps them quite a bit in the Senate. States like Illinois almost always produce two Democratic Senators because strong Democratic performance in Chicago will usually override decent Republican performance elsewhere; by breaking Chicago into its own Senate district, you get the two Senate seats Democrats get anyway and create two for the rest of Illinois.
Anyway, its a fun thought experiment, but I'm not sure it would produce the results Democrats want.
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