TW: Was thinking the other day (it happens). Spurred when I saw a Republican Senator from Wyoming making some inane comment. Passing bills in the Senate takes 60 votes given the mores of the Senate. There are 40 Republican Senators. I suspected that those 40 Senators represent a disproportionately small % of Americans as they come from on average smaller states than Dems. So I did a little work and I was right, but my own bias showed up because after all the Dems have some small state representation as well (i.e. VT, RI). The numbers were as follows:
The 40 Republicans represent about 109MM out of the 308MM total Americans or 35%
So in substance 35% of the U.S. population can block legislation desired by the other 65%. The cloture rule substantively is closer to a two-thirds rule than 60%.
Another way to look at the data would be to see how many folks are represented by the smallest 20 states or 40 Senators regardless of party. Those 20 states contain only 15.4 MM folks or 5% of the total population. Therefore it is theoretically possible for about 5% of the population to block the remaining 95%. While a coalition of Hawaii, Idaho, Wyoming and say Vermont is rare it does speak to how agricultural interests are able to have their way with national policy which usually means subsidies or how a savvy manufacturer spreads production across many states in order to achieve its goals.
2 comments:
Fascinating stuff. Does prove the founders knew what they were doing when they set this up (small states have same representation as Big states).. Not saying its fair but if you live in Idaho you have to say it is...
The system has advantages and disadvantages but at the end of the day it is built upon the need for legitimate compromise. When folks become sufficiently dogmatic to shirk compromise paralysis results. Paralysis can be as bad as oligarchy. In fact paralysis is what leads to oligarchy.
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