U.S. POLITICAL OVER-REPRESENTATION

            by   Jay R. Mandle

Since securing control of the House of Representatives, and many state legislatures as well, the leaders of Republican Party have worked  to implement their commitment to authoritarianism.

A woman’s right to secure an abortion, once understood to be constitutionally protected, is now all but banned in many states, trans people are vilified, books are banned in schools and libraries, a Trump-appointed judge has substituted his ignorance of mifepristone for the science-based judgment of the Food and Drug Administration, and Democratic members of the Tennessee legislature have been expelled for exercising their first amendment rights as they protested the lack of gun control legislation.  

Polling data makes it clear that the majority of Americans do not support these violations of democratic norms. Even so however, the Republican party was able in 2022 to secure control of the House of Representatives. This success occurred in large part because rural voters, who consistently vote for Republican candidates, are over-represented in our electoral system. As Stephen Levitsky, co-author of “How Democracies Die,” writes of  Republicans, “they can wield a lot of power without winning national majorities.”

It is widely known that in the Senate of the United States, political influence is disproportionate to population size. In that chamber, each state is given two seats regardless of the number of people living there. Take, for example,  the states of Wyoming with a population of 576,851 and Vermont with 643,077. Each gets the same number of Senators  as does California with its population of 39,200,000.

What is less well known is that rural political over-representation is present in the House of Representatives as well. However, this inequality is not protected by the Constitution, as is the case of the Senate. In fact with respect to the House, the Constitution is egalitarian – the number of seats assigned to each state is dictated exclusively by the state’s relative population size. Despite this legal equality, House members disproportionately represent rural areas.

The table below uses the population density of electoral districts to illustrate the representational inequality in the House of Representatives. As shown below, only 34 seats were held by individuals representing “Pure Urban districts” following the 2022 election.  In contrast, there were more than twice as many – 73 seats – filled by lawmakers from “Pure Rural” districts. The same pattern appears when the data are aggregated. There were 157 seats filled from the three districts where population density is greatest, compared to the 278 seats that represent people from districts with the lowest population density.
                                        
Seats in the House of Representative by Population Density and the 2020 Presidential Election Percentage Point Victory

 Congressional DistrictsSeats in House of
 Representatives		Presidential Election Results
Pure Urban  34Biden   +57
Urban-Suburban Mix  51Biden   +32
Dense Suburban  72Biden   +24
Sparse Suburban  99Biden     +2
Rural-Suburban Mix106Trump +12
Pure Rural  73Trump +27

 
What makes this over-representation of rural or semi-rural districts in the House so politically significant is the fact that people in these districts overwhelmingly vote Republican. As the table shows, in the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump exceeded Joe Biden’s vote total in “Rural-Suburban Mix” districts by 12 percentage points, and in “Pure Rural” districts by 27 percentage points.

The available data  do not provide a convincing explanation of why this pattern of rural Republican over-representation exists in the House. But it seems very likely that a purposeful design was at work. The political objective would have been to construct state Congressional districts with the aim of maximizing the number of rural districts. Whatever its source, the fact of rural over-representation that favors Republicans in the House is an important reality in the American political system.

Given the disproportionate electoral clout of rural voters, the fact that a majority of the American people are pushing back against the worst of the Republican authoritarian initiatives is important. It would be better, of course, if rural voters would join their urban neighbors in this resistance. In the future, such a development could occur if Democrats worked harder than they have to reach out to people living in areas of low population density.  With concentrated political organizing there is the hope that more rural voters will be won over and turn against the anti-democratic tide.

But in the meantime because urban dwellers are disadvantaged in Congress, the American electoral system will continue to be at risk.
  ________________________________________________________ABOUT THE AUTHOR                                                                                     
Jay Mandle is the Emerita W. Bradford Wiley Professor of Economics, Emeritus,at Colgate University. His many books include Change Elections to Change America: Democracy Matters Students In Action, and Creating Political Equality: Elections As a Public Good,. Mandle’s regular monthly editorials, Money On My Mind, appear on the Democracy Matters website where they explore the role of private money in politics and other critical social issues.
The views expressed in Money On My Mind are those of the author, (not necessarily those of Democracy Matters, and are meant to stimulate discussion.