Abstract
At the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 that produced the US Federal Constitution, it was agreed that the legislature would be bi-cameral in order to accommodate two very different criteria: states as constitutive members of the union and democratic political representation. Thus, the Senate comprises equal representation of states (two Senators each) while the House of Representatives is based upon equal representation of people whereby numbers of Representatives per state are updated after every decennial national census. This arrangement was a compromise agreed to ensure ratification of the Constitution in all the 13 initial states. The specification of the Senate was particularly important in bringing the smaller states on board. At the time the country was largely rural so that differences between small and large states were significant but still relatively small: in 1790, Virginia was the most populous state and had 11 times the population of the least populous, Rhode Island. However, subsequent urbanization of the USA has totally transformed the situation: in the 2020 census the most populous state is California which has 70 times the population of Wyoming, the least populous state.
This disproportion is much more than a constitutional curiosity. There is a division of functions between the two parts of the legislature which means that key areas of policy are not subject to national democratic oversight. This has been highlighted in recent years where, for instance, critical confirmations of Supreme Court Justices and Foreign Policy decisions concerning climate change have been made possible through the Senate despite only having minority American popular support. This is not an urban versus rural conflict since the USA is a highly urbanized society; rather the Senate is based upon a distorted urban geography where the democratic importance of cities is not a simple function of their demography because it is their state location that is so crucial. It is this 18th century specification of 21st century America politics that we illustrate through three related graphics.
Our key concept is Senate Demographic Clout, which is a measure of the political influence of a resident in a given state in the composition of the Senate. Quite obviously residents of small demographic states have more influence than their fellow citizens in states with large populations. The specific degree of a state’s Senate Demographic Clout is based upon comparison with the national average number of citizens represented by two Senators (i.e. total US population/50). Actual state populations that are represented in the Senate are then computed as multiples of the national average. It is these measures of the ‘Senate-worth’ of a state’s residents that is a state’s Senate Demographic Clout. Thus from the 2020 census we compute Wyoming’s Senate Demographic Clout to be 5.83 indicating the degree of their residents’ political influence on the composition of the Senate above the US average, whereas for Californian residents it was a lowly 0.08, almost disenfranchisement!
Equal states, unequal residents
Figure 1 is a picture of the USA from the viewpoint of residents in the 50 states as represented in the Senate. Senate demographic clout of state residents.
The cartogram is constructed as 50 same-size rectangles representing the equal status of each state in the Senate. They are arranged to approximate the relative locations of states as indicated by the two-letter state abbreviations. These latter vary in size in accordance with a state’s Senate Demographic Clout: all emboldened letters indicate states whose residents have above average influence on the composition of the Senate.
The basic purpose of this figure is to present a clear image of the specification of the Senate’s composition through visual staging of Senate Demographic Clouts. The results show two clusters of very high influence on Senate composition: small states in the North East, and Western Plains/Mountain states. The two non-coterminous states, Alaska and Hawaii, also have high Senate Demographic Clouts. In contrast, more urbanized states with low Senate Demographic Clouts are spread across the country: as well as California, Texas, Florida and New York have very low values with Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia not much higher.
The shape of the senate’s America
Figure 2 is a picture of the USA from the perspective of the Senate on how its composition derives from the 50 states. US federal senate: State demographic clout.
This is a cartogram of US states with each represented by the size of its Senate Demographic Clout. Thus, instead of the familiar USA map where each state is depicted by projections of its actual areal shape and size, here these are replaced by the Senate Demographic Clout measures of states. There is one thing that is retained from the familiar map: spatial contiguities between the states. That is to say, shared borders are maintained: for instance, Maine only shares a border with New Hampshire, whereas the latter also shares borders with Massachusetts and Vermont.
The basic purpose of this figure is to show the specific shape of the USA from a Senate perspective. Consistent with Figure 1 its form is dominated by two bulges in the North East and Western Plains/Mountain regions with a squeezed middle. But the treatment of the states with very low Senate Demographic Clouts is instructive here: they are difficult to actually find in the Senate’s America! Given that our input generally inverts the areal extent of states the algorithm is forced to portray the likes of California, Texas, Florida and New York as thin slivers in order to maintain their contiguities with neighbouring states. But, of course, that is the point of this cartogram: these states are almost invisible in their residents’ individual influence on the Senate.
The senate’s urban geography of America
Figure 3 is a picture of the USA from an urban perspective as filtered through composition of the Senate. US senate: Governance urban hierarchy.
The USA is a highly urbanized society and the Senate’s composition can only reflect this geographical reality. But it does so in a peculiar way. If we consider the Senate as a provider of governance services then cities appear in two guises: first as contributing to the supply (electing Senators) and second as creating the demand for the services (myriad urban political needs). The former is measured by a city’s Senate Demographic Clout, and the latter by the population size of a city. Since Senate governance services are a product of the interaction of supply and demand, we use the product of clout and size to indicate the importance of a city from a Senate perspective. These are computed for the largest urban municipality in each state and are presented as percentages of the highest scoring city (New York) as portrayed in Figure 3.
The purpose of this map is to show the peculiar nature of the Senate’s engagement with Urban America. Figure 3 can be interpreted as an urban hierarchy but it is one unique to the Senate. To be sure New York is top of the hierarchy but it is joined there by Anchorage scoring 87, there being no other city reaching 60 and with only Albuquerque, Omaha and Honolulu in the next level of over 50. Chicago appears in a level just below the top two and is accompanied, by amongst others, Sioux Falls. At the next level we find Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Boston joined by Boise, Cheyenne and Billings. The only consistent geographical pattern is that cities in the Southeast are relatively unimportant in this Senate urban hierarchy. Overall, this is an urban geography like no other – and that is what you get with an 18th century specification for supplying 21st century governance services.
Sources and credits
Sources on US Senate representation and US Federal government:
US Constitution and the Federalist Papers both reprinted in: Compilation by Barnes and Noble (2012), The Constitution of the United States of America and Selected Writings of the Founding Fathers (New York, New York, USA: Barnes and Noble). 826pp. Most included documents originally published between 1761 and 1813, but Amendments to the US Constitution up to 1992 are included. Fred M. Shelley, J. Clark Archer, Fiona M. Davidson and Stanley D. Brunn (1996) Political Geography of the United States (New York, New York, USA). 364 pp. US population by state 2020 and TIGER boundary file for states: U.S. Bureau of the Census (2021) U.S. Census of Population, 2020 (Washington, D.C., USA) U.S. Bureau of the Census (2019) cb_2019_us_state_500k (Washington, D.C., USA)
Programmes: ESRI Inc. (2020) ArcGIS Desktop 10.8.1 (Redlands, California, USA, ESRI Inc.) Adobe Systems Inc. (2009) Adobe Illustrator CS4 (San Jose, California, USA, Adobe Systems Inc.) go-cart.io on-line web application to create area cartograms for Contiguous US States, accessed 20 January 2022 Gastner, M.T., Seguy, V., More, P. (2018) Fast flow-based algorithm for creating density-equalling map projections. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 115(10):E2164
Footnotes
Author contributions
Peter J. Taylor: Text and one graphic
John C Archer: Two graphics
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
