[jgwil2]

And yet if we look at it objectively, the right is clearly overrepresnted in our political system. Republicans lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. In the next presidential election there will be many eligible voters who weren't even born last time they won. The Senate gives a seven point advantage to Republicans. So please, explain to me where you get this idea that the right is "treated unfairly," because it's getting very hard to see how this argument is being made in good faith.

[AnthonyMouse]

> And yet if we look at it objectively, the right is clearly overrepresnted in our political system.

That isn't nearly as clear as it seems, because of the incentives the electoral college creates.

Republicans could pick up a lot more votes in places like California or New York if they had any reason to try, but none of those votes help them if they can't flip the state. Spending resources campaigning in California so that it goes to the Democrats by 54 to 46 instead 65 to 35 is a losing strategy, so they don't.

But then that's why the popular vote numbers come out the way they do. If you actually abolished the electoral college, suddenly the foregone conclusion states would matter, everybody's campaign strategy would change and so would all the numbers.

The people the electoral college actually underrepresents are the people of California and Massachusetts. But also Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, etc. The people it overrepresents are the people of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. The swing states. Because they're the only people whose vote can plausibly change the outcome, so they're the only people whose concerns politicians care to address.

Which means you can pretty easily end up in a situation where people from deep red states feel underrepresented, because in practice they are. The same as the people from deep blue states.

[jgwil2]

Thanks for your reply. Let me start by saying that I agree the numbers would look completely different if it weren't for the Electoral College. That is because the Republican platform has consistently failed to win over a majority of Americans: absent the EC, the Republican Party would have to recalibrate its platform in order to remain competitive. This feedback mechanism is essential to a functioning democracy, and it's currently broken, because Republicans still have a decent shot at winning nationally thanks to the bias in the EC.

With respect to your argument that the EC actually overrepresents swing states, you may be correct. However, the EC bias clearly favors Republicans over Democrats. In 2020, that bias was 3.9% in favor of Republicans, although it varies from election to election[0]. When the size of the bias exceeds the margin of victory for the winner of the popular vote, the popular vote loser takes the EC, as in 2016.

Furthermore, you didn't actually address the most antidemocratic institution of all: the Senate. The Senate is heavily biased towards small states; California (pop 39m) and Wyoming (pop < 1m) each have two senators. The average state is currently much more Republican than the average American, amounting to 6.6% bias[1]. That is to say, Democrats could win by five points nationally (a huge victory given current polarization levels) and still not control the Senate.

Finally, I'm sure that you can end up with a situation wherein conservatives "feel" underrepresented; my whole point is that they objectively are not, so this whole persecution complex evinced by some is completely ridiculous. People are entitled to their feelings; they should also be willing to look at facts and adjust their reactions accordingly.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-22/republ...

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senates-rural-skew-...

[AnthonyMouse]

> absent the EC, the Republican Party would have to recalibrate its platform in order to remain competitive.

Absent the EC, both parties would have to recalibrate their platforms in order to remain competitive. It would completely upturn the map. You would see Republicans campaigning in New York and Democrats in Texas. Wall St. and Big Oil and Hollywood would gain influence, retirees in Florida and auto workers in the rust belt would lose it. It would redraw all the lines and fundamentally change both of the parties.

I think that's really where you're going wrong. Treating the members of each party as two different species, as though every voter for a given party has uniform shared interests with all the others. There is no such thing as "Republicans" being over-represented. Pennsylvanians are over-represented, which influences the party platforms of both the Republicans and the Democrats. Which allows them both to ignore California and Texas and New York, but also the entire dozen odd little deep red states that are supposed to be the most "over-represented" despite not being competitive at all and consequently being totally ignored by both parties.

> The average state is currently much more Republican than the average American, amounting to 6.6% bias

The obvious flaw in the party-based analysis being that we're currently going into a legislative session in which the Democrats control the Senate, which they do approximately half of the time. Because they adjust their policies to the map.

Also, the purpose of the Senate is to be this way, in the same way that Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected. Senators were not originally elected, they were appointed by the state legislatures. It's by design as a check on the populist tendencies of the House, and causing Senators to be directly elected has only made everything worse by depriving the states of their voice in the federal government and the destroying the restraint on federal power that once implied.

[jgwil2]

> Treating the members of each party as two different species, as though every voter for a given party has uniform shared interests with all the others. There is no such thing as "Republicans" being over-represented. Pennsylvanians are over-represented, which influences the party platforms of both the Republicans and the Democrats.

For the reasons I've outlined above, Republicans are overrepresented. To reiterate, it takes more Democratic votes to achieve a majority than it does Republican votes. This is a matter of fact.

> The obvious flaw in the party-based analysis being that we're currently going into a legislative session in which the Democrats control the Senate, which they do approximately half of the time.

But Republicans have controlled the Senate even when Democratic Senators have gotten more votes and represent more people. So Democrats are forced to adjust their policies while Republicans are under much less pressure to do so.

> Also, the purpose of the Senate is to be this way, in the same way that Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected.

When the Senate was created, the difference in population between the largest and smallest states was 12x. Today it is 68x. If you still think this is a feature rather than a bug, you and I have fundamentally different ideas about what democracy should be.

This will be my final comment as all those who keep telling me that it's my duty as a liberal to engage in dialog with the other side also seem to downvote my comments to oblivion when I try. Ciao.

[hindsightbias]

7 of the last 8 elections. And yet they are the ones “out of touch”

[jgwil2]

Thanks for the correction!

[athms]

Also, SCOTUS has had a conservative majority (except during a vacancy) since 1989.

[jki275]

The first time SCOTUS has had a conservative majority since the 50s was when Amy Barrett was confirmed last year.

Maybe your definition of conservative is not the same as most conservatives, but that’s just how it is.

[jgwil2]

How about instead we say, "appointed by a Republican president," so we don't get bogged down in semantics? Since Heller, Citizens United, Bush v Gore etc were clearly the products of partisan Republican justices.

Sorry to be blunt but this just goes to show how often your "feelings" diverge from objective reality.

[athms]

One can be moderately conservative and still conservative. If you look at the court's decisions, the only time in the last one hundred years SCOTUS has had a sustained liberal streak was in the 1960s.