More Votes Cast Against Democratic Senators Than For Them

Sometimes I wonder why liberals care so much that Gore won the popular vote in 2000, or that the populations of states represented by Democratic senators are larger than those represented by Republicans. Do they feel more emotionally secure believing the majority of Americans really do agree with them, despite losing elections? Or do they simply enjoy dreaming that a few rejiggered Constitutional clauses would return them control of American government? (Conservatives fall prey to a similar fallacy when they count Presidential acreage instead of votes, but that doesn't seem quite so prevalent or vehement.) Someone's even created a blog named Democratic Senators Represent More Americans. (Or "savedemocracy" if you go by the link--as though democracy is suddenly in danger because the Federal election system, humming along the same way for decades, has recently spit out a few results they don't like.) The proprietor counts half of a state's population for each party in mixed states (one senator from each party) and counts the full population for the party with both Senators in non-mixed states. He links to a chart showing that nearly 9.4 million more Americans are represented by Democratic senators than Republican ones. But that's not a very refined way to count representation because to be consistent--horror of horrors--you'd need to put the full U.S. population in the Republican column since we're all represented by President Bush. And liberals are quite fond of telling us Bush doesn't represent them. Here's another demonstration of the silliness of this method of counting support: if the three biggest states--California, New York, and Texas--changed to mixed states, Republicans would pick up just one additional Senate seat but 15 million new represented voters and a 21 million voter lead over Democrats. A more equitable solution is to count the number of votes cast for each senatorial candidate in 2000, 2002, and 2004. And with this a slightly different picture emerges: 4,058,810 more votes were cast against Democratic candidates than for them. True, Democrats had a slight edge in vote totals over Republicans, but nearly six million votes for independant candidates swing the majority decisively against the Democrats. Ahhhh. I feel secure again.

	2000	2002	2004
Republican	37,186,653	21,443,548	39,920,562
Democrat	36,944,395	19,244,015	44,014,943
Other	1,530,679	1,905,007	2,275,714

	Total All Years	Percent
Republican	98,550,763	48.2%
Democrat	100,203,353	49.0%
Other	5,711,400	2.8%
Total All Parties	204,465,516	100.0%
Non-Democrat	104,262,163	51.0%

U.S. Senatorial Election Vote Totals (Compiled from CNN.com - 2004, 2002, 2000)

UPDATE: DSRMA responds--I think. He mentions "some right wing bloggers" but doesn't name or link anyone:

It seems like some right wing bloggers are saying that if you didn't vote for Bush you don't have to pay taxes. They are taking issue with my finding that Democratic Senators Represent More Americans. They say that those people who didn't vote for a Democratic Senator, don't have to be counted as being represented by them. In that case president Bush doesn't represent me. He's not my Head of State. It sure sounds like the bloggers are saying I don't have to pay taxes because I didn't vote for the guy running this country. I mean are we supposed to be one country or two? I could have counted every person in a state as being represented by each Senator. The percentages would have come out the same. But if the right wingers want to break up the country, who am I to stop them? So much for unity. And, BTW, if I didn't vote for my Congressman, does that mean I don't have to obey laws?

He's trying a neat little trick: implying he really just meant more Americans are legally represented by Democratic senators, not that Democrats represent the political viewpoints of most Americans. But that's not what the left means when it drags out this claim to justify filibustering judicial nominees, as done by the reliably fuzzy-headed E.J. Dijonnaise and others last year. It's a claim of moral authority, a cry for Liberté, égalité, fraternité, a claim they've been cheated of their rightful majoritarian primacy. To claim otherwise is to relegate the title "Democratic Senators Represent More Americans" to a mere truism--like "Most Chinese Live in China".