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The Conservative Policy Bias of US Senate Malapportionment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2022

Richard Johnson Open the ORCID record for Richard Johnson [Opens in a new window]  and
Lisa L. Miller Open the ORCID record for Lisa L. Miller [Opens in a new window]
Richard Johnson
Affiliation:
Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Lisa L. Miller
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, USA
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Abstract

The US Senate is unique in the United States and rare internationally for its total disregard of population differences among its representational units. To analyze malapportionment’s policy impact, we devised a hypothetical reapportionment scheme that more closely approximates state population but remains favorable to small states. We developed a formula to reweight senators’ roll-call votes to reflect better state population differences. We recalculated 804 key US Senate votes between 1961 and 2019 and found that state equality in the Senate systematically biases policy outcomes toward Republican preferences.

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 10 - 17
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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References

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