Mitch McConnell, this morning on Morning Edition, in his role as new deficit hawk, explained that Obama can’t be spending like mad with his stimulus package before taking into account the fact that the (newly) anti-deficit spending GOP has their own agenda the want respected. But McConnell then made a questionable assertion while explaining why a stimulus plan cannot make it to the floor without GOP input:
And it’s not just a matter of pride for us. We represent in the Senate–Senate Republicans represent half the American population.
Huh? What relationship does the Senate representation have with population? The whole point of the Senate is that each state, regardless of population (or area, or number of Piggly Wigglys) gets the same number of votes. Population matters in the House of Representatives, where the GOP simply doesn’t “represent half the American population,” since such a representation would yield a tied House. Instead, the GOP is a deep minority party in that chamber.
So what kind of spin is McConnell up to here? Why mention population? Now, before I continue, I want to reiterate the point in the previous paragraph: Senate numbers never have anything to do with “population.” They matter by state, and state only. This is important, since it shows that “represent half the American population” is so ambiguous a statement as to seem all bluster. But what could it mean? That the populations of all states with a GOP senator make up a majority of the US population? Maybe.
In the current Senate, the GOP has 41 seats, representing 28 different states. So the GOP senators represent a majority of states. Of course, by-state (as opposed to by-seat) representation in the Senate is not a zero-sum game. Democrats represent not 22 (50 – 28) states, but, rather, 35 states. So, yes, more than half of the states have a GOP senator. But an even larger number of states have a Democratic senator. So the claims of “half” representation in the Senate by the GOP, using any metric used to deliver Senator numbers in the real world (by state, by members) is simply misleading.
But, yes, McConnell said that Senate Republicans “represent half the American population.” So even though (again!) population never comes into play when discussing the Senate, let’s use the US Census state population data from 2008 to see if McConnell is full of it or not. According to the Census Bureau, the 2008 population of the US is 304,059,724. Those 28 states above have a total population of 154,649,275. In other words, just a touch over 50% of the US population.
But if McConnell is arguing that Senate Republicans represent half the US population, then what proportion do Senate Democrats represent? Their 35 states feature a total population of 227,195,202, or 74.7% of the US population.
This way, then, Senate Democrats “represent three quarters of the American population.” If that’s the case, why on earth should they listen to what the GOP has to say? The Democrats have three quarters of the US on their side!
This is why McConnell’s spin is so nasty–it makes the GOP look like an important, national (as opposed to weak and regional) party by using dubious metrics to fluff itself up while ignoring the fact that if the same criteria were applied to the other party, the Democrats would be not merely an important and national party, but, rather, the party in a virtual single-party state!
Still, let’s have some fun here… What if the Senate was actually a zero-sum game by population? What if we broke down the populations and distributed split states (with a GOP Senator and a Dem senator, or with a Dem senator and an independent senator)? What proportion of the “population” does, then, the GOP represent?
There are 15 states with full GOP delegations in the Senate. Their total population is 76,272,689. That’s pretty much 25% of the US population. Of the states with one GOP senator, the total population is 78,376,586. But since they only have one (of two) senators, we have to come up with a tool to distribute that state’s population between the two parties. A very quick and dirty tool is to split the difference 50/50, giving the GOP 39,188,293 extra Americans, for a total representation of 37.9%. The funny thing here is, that, of course, that’s not too far from the 41/98 fraction (42%) of seats that makes up the current GOP caucus in the Senate.
If the Senate is a zero-sum game by population, then, we can just subtract from 100% and from 304,059,724 to get the Democrat and Independent numbers. But the point is that that “half” McConnell speaks of disintegrates. Assuming a zero-sum game, which one must when discussing binaries (yes or no votes), the GOP has no “half” representation or majority representation. The only reason they’re at the table at all is because of anti-majoritarian Senate rules regarding cloture (which I basically support, but still…) and because of Obama’s infatuation with comity.
Now of course I could measure out the zero-sum differently by population, by comparing ratios of election margins and so on, but that kind of exercise would only further suggest that there is some parliamentary way in which the proportion of the “population” a party represents in the Senate means something. It doesn’t. Ever. It’s just spin from a wobbly GOP delivered by a wobbly GOP leader who barely carried “half” of the voters of his own state two months ago.
Tags: Barack Obama, Census, Democrats, GOP, Mitch McConnell, Senate, statistics
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