{"id":3597,"date":"2020-10-10T20:33:21","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T20:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3597"},"modified":"2020-10-10T20:33:21","modified_gmt":"2020-10-10T20:33:21","slug":"the-senates-rural-skew-makes-it-very-hard-for-democrats-to-win-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3597","title":{"rendered":"The Senate\u2019s Rural Skew Makes It Very Hard For Democrats To Win The Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“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<\/em> win back the Senate this year \u2014 indeed, they were slight favorites<\/a> to do so before the Ginsburg news. But in the long run, they\u2019re likely to lose it more often than not.” 
…
“the overall U.S. population (including Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico) is split almost exactly evenly between these buckets: 25 percent rural, 23 percent exurban\/small town, 27 percent suburban\/small city, and 25 percent urban core\/large city.”
…
“Because there are a lot of largely rural, low-population states, the average state \u2014 which reflects the composition of the Senate \u2014 has 35 percent of its population in rural areas and only 14 percent in urban core areas, even though the country as a whole \u2014 including dense, high-population states like New York, Texas and California \u2014 has about 25 percent of the population in each group. That\u2019s a pretty serious skew. It means that the Senate, de facto, has two or three times as much rural representation as urban core representation \u2026 even though there are actually about an equal number of voters in each bucket nationwide.”
…
“Since rural areas tend to be whiter, it means the Senate represents a whiter population, too.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…
“In a strong national environment for Democrats, in other words, the Senate can be competitive. Generally speaking, at least. A Democratic-leaning environment wasn\u2019t enough to overcome the Senate\u2019s baseline GOP-lean and\u00a0a bad map<\/a>\u00a0in 2018. Democrats\u00a0lost\u00a0<\/em>seats. And in an average year \u2014 and certainly in a year like 2014 where Republicans have the advantage \u2014 Democrats face dire prospects in the Senate.”\u00a0
…
“despite their current 47-53 deficit in the Senate, Democratic senators actually represent slightly more people than Republicans.”
…
“the Senate is\u00a0effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole<\/em>, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. That\u2019s likely to make the Republican majority on the Supreme Court pretty durable.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n


https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/the-senates-rural-skew-makes-it-very-hard-for-democrats-to-win-the-supreme-court\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“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 \u2014 indeed, they were slight favorites to do so before the Ginsburg news. But in the long run, they\u2019re likely to lose it more often than not.” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“the overall U.S. population (including Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico) is split almost exactly evenly between these buckets: 25 percent rural, 23 percent exurban\/small town, 27 percent suburban\/small city, and 25 percent urban core\/large city.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Because there are a lot of largely rural, low-population states, the average state \u2014 which reflects the composition of the Senate \u2014 has 35 percent of its population in rural areas and only 14 percent in urban core areas, even though the country as a whole \u2014 including dense, high-population states like New York, Texas and California \u2014 has about 25 percent of the population in each group. That\u2019s a pretty serious skew. It means that the Senate, de facto, has two or three times as much rural representation as urban core representation \u2026 even though there are actually about an equal number of voters in each bucket nationwide.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Since rural areas tend to be whiter, it means the Senate represents a whiter population, too.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“In a strong national environment for Democrats, in other words, the Senate can be competitive. Generally speaking, at least. A Democratic-leaning environment wasn\u2019t enough to overcome the Senate\u2019s baseline GOP-lean and a bad map in 2018. Democrats lost seats. And in an average year \u2014 and certainly in a year like 2014 where Republicans have the advantage \u2014 Democrats face dire prospects in the Senate.” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“despite their current 47-53 deficit in the Senate, Democratic senators actually represent slightly more people than Republicans.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. That\u2019s likely to make the Republican majority on the Supreme Court pretty durable.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[431,865],"class_list":["post-3597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-democracy","tag-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3598,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597\/revisions\/3598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}