The Senate's Rural Skew Makes It Very Hard For Democrats To Win The Supreme Court

[CousinIT]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senates-rural-skew-makes-it-very-hard-for-democrats-to-win-the-supreme-court/

I don’t have a particularly strong take on how the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg will affect either the presidential election or the race for control of the U.S. Senate. And I’d encourage you to avoid putting too much stock in anybody else’s take for now, too. The very earliest indication is that President Trump’s desire to move full-speed ahead toward naming Ginsburg’s replacement could be unpopular, but that’s based on only one poll.

But here’s what I do know: the Senate is an enormous problem for Democrats given the current political coalitions, in which Democrats are dominant in cities while Republicans triumph in rural areas. And because the Senate is responsible for confirming Supreme Court picks, that means the Supreme Court is a huge problem for Democrats too. Sure, Democrats might win back the Senate this year — indeed, they were slight favorites to do so before the Ginsburg news. But in the long run, they’re likely to lose it more often than not.

You can probably grasp intuitively that a legislative body which provides as much representation to Wyoming (population: 580,000) as California (population: 39.5 million) will tend to favor rural areas. But it’s a bigger effect than you might realize, so let’s run some numbers. At FiveThirtyEight, our favorite way to distinguish between urban and rural areas is based on using census tracts to estimate how many people live within a 5-mile radius of you. Based on this, we can break every person in the country down into four buckets:

Rural: Less than 25,000 people live within a 5-mile radius of you;
Exurban or small town: Between 25,000 and 100,000 people within a 5-mile radius;
Suburban or small city: Between 100,000 and 250,000 people within a 5-mile radius;
Urban core or large city: More than 250,000 people within a 5-mile radius.

. . .

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Link to tweet

We ran the numbers, and the Senate is currently around *6 to 7 points* (!) more Republican than the country as a whole, based on the position of the median states relative to the national average. That means Dems need ~landslide margins to win the Senate.

[DonaldsRump]

1. Ok, so let's go for broke and get those landslide margins!

This is our last best chance to do so.

[moose65]

7. Amen to that!

And also we need to remember that demographic shift will continue. The South will eventually flip and become Democratic again, due to the large African American population and the continued influx of people from the Northeast who move down here. It will happen eventually- Virginia has already flipped and Georgia and NC are getting close. If Texas ever flips, then the Republicans are fucked.

[Statistical]

2. It isn't a complete solution but open PR & DC to statehood.

That would shift the median senate seat slightly closer to the center. It still means Democrats are at a disadvantage but instead of 6-7 pt disadvantage maybe it would be a 4-5 pt disadvantage.

Side note: The article talks about needing a 6-7pt advantage to flip the Senate ... Biden is leading by about 6-7 pts. So it is certainly possible to flip it this year but maybe no be able to hold it in 2022 & 2024.

[Drunken Irishman]

3. Which is why expanding he courts is very risky.

Even if the Democrats are able to get Puerto Rico and DC admitted as states, and four additional senators (tho, the assumption that PR would be 100% solidly Democratic is unfounded, currently the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, who's a non-voting member of the US House, is a Republican - not a Democrat), it does not lock Democrats into a forever majority.

[empedocles]

4. If traitortrump loses the Election, and is removed from the WH, [one way or another], -

and indicted for treason . . . many, many, things should begin to change.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. This is an issue that must be addressed head on at some point,

or else this country simply will not hold together.

The overall trend is towards more and more people being represented by fewer and fewer senators and representatives. There will also be a trend towards ever more Republicans getting elected president by the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by ever greater margins.

This is simply not sustainable long term, and if it isn't fixed, this country will eventually break up into smaller countries.

[intrepidity]

6. Mint more states (DC, PR) nt