Wampum

Yesterday, we noted that Democrats have had a far less efficient distribution of their votes for United States Senator than the GOP. In 2004, the Democrats were slaughtered in the Senate races, losing four seats. Nonetheless, Democratic Senate candidates received two and a half million more votes than did Republican candidates.

Over the entire six year cycle of Senate elections, Democrats garnered more total votes than Republican candidates but hold eleven fewer seats. We are exploring why that is the case.

When I first noticed the difference between total votes and Senate seats won, it seemed obvious that the discrepancy was the result of the Senate’s bias in favor of small states. The Senate allocates two Senate seats to the multitudes of California and the same number to the vast empty spaces of Wyoming. That creates a bias in favor of small states. How large is the bias? Please consider the following:

In 2004, Barbara Boxer ran for reelection and won. She received almost 7 million votes (6,955,728).

The following Senators won election with a combined vote total lower than Boxer:

Biden (135,253), Murkowski (149,773), Thomas (157,622), Johnson (167,487), Conrad (176,470), Stevens (179,438), Carper (181,566), Jeffords (189,133), Thune (197,848), Baucus (204,853), Burns (208,082), Dorgan (212,143), Leahy (216,972), Chafee (222,588), Sununu (227,229), Akaka (251,215), Reed (253,922), Craig (266,215), Rockefeller (275,281), Collins (295,041), Inouye (313,629), Domenici (314,301), Ensign (330,687), Nelson (Neb) (353,093), Bingaman (363,744), Hagel (397,438), Gregg (434,847), and Crapo (499,796).

It seemed obvious to me that since the GOP is strong in all of those very square western states with beautiful vistas and little population, the small state bias of the Senate would explain the discrepancy in vote count vs. Senate seats.

What was obvious to me turned out to be wrong. Just because the Senate favors small states does not mean it favors Republicans. The minimum number of electoral votes a state can receive is three. That means that the population of the state is so small it comprises only one House district. Seven states have the minimum. The smallest (in population) seven states are Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. The fourteen Senators from those states are divided 7 Democrats, 6 Republicans, and one independent (Jeffords) who caucuses with the Democrats.

Of the 28 Senators who received fewer combined votes than Senator Boxer, 14 are Republicans, 13 are Democrats and Jeffords, again, is independent.

Democrats and Republicans split the small states. I was surprised at how well Democrats have done in Senate races in the lowest population western states. Democrats hold four of the ten Senate seats in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

The discrepancy in vote totals comes not from the small states but from the fact that Republicans are not competitive in three of the largest states, California, New York and Illinois.

In 2004, Democrats cast more than 35% of their total Senate votes for Barbara Boxer (6,955,728), Chuck Schumer (4,555,922) and Barack Obama (3,597,456). Democrats won those three races by more than seven million votes.

By comparison, the largest victories by Republicans were in Ohio, Arizona, and Alabama. In those three races, Republicans outpolled Democrats by a total of about 3.3 million votes. The difference in size of victory in the three biggest wins for each side more than accounts for the entire margin by which Democrats outpolled Republicans in Senate races in 2004.

If we eliminate the three largest victories for each side and rerun the numbers we get:

2004 Senate Votes (Eliminating the 3 largest blow outs for each side)

Democrats 21,278,369

Republicans 26,136,953

After eliminating the six races, Republicans won 55% of the total vote and 16 of 28 (57% percent) races.

The discrepancy noted yesterday is explained by the fact that Democrats won three blow outs in three of the largest states. If Democrats won the big blow out races, Republicans did better in the close matches.

In 2004, there were six races decided by five or fewer percentage points. The GOP won five of those six (Murkowski +3, Martinez + 2, Bunning + 2, Burr + 5, and Thune + 2). Democrats won only one close race (Salazar +4). In our next installment in this series, we will look to see if there is a trend of the GOP winning close Senate races.

Error fixed.