Does Malapportionment Favor the Republican Party?: An Analysis of US Senate Elections and the Electoral College

Bernard Tamas

doi:10.1515/for-2023-2023

Article

Does Malapportionment Favor the Republican Party?

An Analysis of US Senate Elections and the Electoral College

Bernard Tamas

Published/Copyright: July 24, 2023

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From the journal The Forum Volume 21 Issue 4

Abstract

This paper examines electoral bias within US politics, including as it relates to malapportionment in the US Senate and Electoral College. Specifically, with the Republican Party gaining significant support in rural areas and the Democratic Party becoming concentrated in urban areas, there is concern that the US electoral system increases the probability that the Republican Party will win a much higher percent of Senate seats than its public support and repeatedly win the presidency without having won a plurality of votes, as was the case in 2000 and 2016. I explore this concern using a relatively new measure called the Directional Proportionality Index (DPIx). Applying it to the Electoral College since 1872 and the US Senate since 1918, this paper demonstrates that while there does exist a small pro-Republican bias in the Electoral College owing to malapportionment, the pro-Republican malapportionment bias in Senate races is far more substantial. However, as long as the percent vote for Democratic and Republican presidential candidates remains close due to partisan polarization, this small bias in the Electoral College is likely enough to lead to more cases whereby the Republican Party loses the popular vote but still wins control over the White House and the United States Congress.

Keywords: directional proportionality index; DPIx; electoral college; electoral bias; malapportionment; US senate elections

Corresponding author: Bernard Tamas, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA, USA, E-mail: bitamas@valdosta.edu

Appendix A

There are four critical data used in this study: population by state since 1872, US Senate election results by state from 1914 to 2020, presidential election vote by state from 1872 to 2020, and presidential electors won by state from 1872 to 2020. For Senate races, only general election results were used (i.e. elections on the regular schedule), as was outlined in the paper. The specific sources were as follows:

Population data was gathered from the US Census Bureau. For the period from the 1910 to 2020 censuses, the following document was used: “Historical Population Change Data (1910–2020),” Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange-data-text.html, [Retrieved May 1, 2022]. For earlier years, the following document was used: Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, “Historical Census Statistics on Population Total By Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States”, Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2002/demo/POP-twps0056.pdf. [Retrieved May 1, 2022].
Presidential election data were gathered from Burnham (1955), “Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Elections”. https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html. [Retrieved May 1, 2022]; and Clerk of the House of Representatives, “Election Statistics: 1920 to Present”, https://history.house.gov/Institution/Election-Statistics/Election-Statistics/. [Retrieved May 1, 2022].
Senate election data were gathered from Dubin (1998) and Clerk of the House of Representatives, “Election Statistics: 1920 to Present”, https://history.house.gov/Institution/Election-Statistics/Election-Statistics/. [Retrieved May 1, 2022].

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Published Online: 2023-07-24

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Keywords for this article

directional proportionality index; DPIx; electoral college; electoral bias; malapportionment; US senate elections