The emerging Senate minority: The future of the Democratic Party in the Senate
ANDREW MORIN: In the days following last November’s election, it seemed like the Democrats would fail to win control of the United States Senate for the fourth cycle in a row. This supposed failure begged the question: were the Democrats doomed to suffer a permanent minority in the Senate? While this worry was narrowly proven unfounded following the Democratic Party’s wins in the Georgia run-off elections, recent trends still raise plenty of concern about the Democratic party’s future in the upper house.
Two-party systems typically counter-balance so that neither party will enjoy a permanent national advantage. However, support will not necessarily be evenly distributed enough to guarantee equal political outcomes. The United States seems to possess unequal political institutions which by their very nature distribute political power unevenly, distorting the national political balance in the process. When observing unequal political institutions in the U.S. today, much of the focus is on the highly visible electoral college, as the gap between the popular vote and the deciding electoral college state for the 2020 presidential election was historically high. If 35,000 Joe Biden voters changed their votes in the right states, Donald Trump would have overcome a 7 million vote deficit and won the electoral college and the presidency. This edge is, however, likely temporary. As recently as in 2012, Democrats held an electoral college advantage and if, as Democrats hope, states like Texas flip blue, much of the Republican advantage will be erased.
When considering unequal political institutions, the real problem for the Democratic Party is the United States Senate.
The anti-majoritarian part of the Senate is no surprise—it is there by design following the request of the smaller states in 1787. The gap between the winning and losing states in the body has never been so high. In the first census in 1790, the biggest state, Virginia, had twelve times the population of the smallest state, Delaware. In 2020, California has 67 times as many people as Wyoming, a disparity more than five times larger. In fact, Vox recently calculated that the Democratic half of the evenly-divided Senate represents 40 million more Americans than its Republican counterpart.
While it is not quite true that the smallest states are all solidly Republican—the ten smallest states are evenly split between the parties—it is true that the Democratic population skews towards the big, very Democratic states states. As a result, 7 million voters simply pad the Democratic Party’s winning margins in California and New York, their biggest prizes, while Republicans are able to carry their biggest states—Texas, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina— with a mere 1.5 million votes combined. The inefficient allocation of Democratic voters is less of a problem in the House of Representatives (although it still exists), but it can prove fatal to the Democratic Party’s chances in the Senate, where seat allocation does not try to be proportional.
This might not even be a huge problem. Democrats won at least half the states in three of the last four presidential elections, suggesting that they still have the ability to seize control. However, this statistic masks the bias against Democrats.In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes, but Trump won enough states to win a filibuster-proof majority if translated into Senate seats. While President Biden won the electoral and popular vote convincingly in the 2020 election, he tied with Trump in the number of states won. This disadvantage is extremely asymmetrical, as the odds of a Republican presidential candidate winning the popular vote and failing to win a majority of states would be astronomically low.
But we’ve seen Senate Democrats outperform their presidential nominees before. The bigger problem for the party today is their increasing inability to compete in unfriendly terrain. From 2006-2008, Democrats won eleven senate seats from eight states that Barack Obama— the highest-performing Democratic presidential candidate this century— failed to carry in 2008. These included seats in the most Republican states in the country, including the Dakotas, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Louisiana. From 2018-2020, Democratic senate candidates won just three states that Joe Biden failed to win in 2020.
It was the flexibility to compete across the map that gave Democrats a streak of Senate control that lasted 40 years long through an era that saw four Republican presidential landslides as recently as the mid-1990s. The same flexibility allowed the party to briefly reach a filibuster-proof majority after the 2008 elections thanks to its incumbents in the South and Midwest. Why can’t they do the same now?
There are a few reasons for this. The leftward drift of the Democratic Party certainly explains part of it. Another explanation might be the rise in suburban support for the party, which has increased Democrats’ strength in major metropolitan areas at the expense of rural ones—helping them in the city-dominated states they are already capable of winning. The biggest problem may be the nationalization of so many races. Right before the 2018 election, for example, the Kavanaugh hearings bitterly divided the country. Democrats running for re-election in deep red North Dakota, Missouri, and Indiana found themselves on the wrong side of a bitter partisan divide within their states. This trend has forced recent popular candidates—like former Governors Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) and Steve Bullock (D- Mont.)—to focus their campaigns defensively on losing national issues: Trump, abortion, the Supreme Court. While it is necessary for candidates to take positions on these issues, it is also important for those running in unfriendly terrain to be able to distance themselves from the national party and establish their own space and campaign focuses. There is still a range of ideological diversity within the caucus and the party, and campaigns need to be allowed to reflect that. From labor rights to infrastructure to healthcare, elements of the Democratic platform are popular throughout the country, but campaigns are increasingly forced to defend the most controversial members of their party instead.
Unless the Democratic Party fields candidates who are able to win red and purple states while also creating a national environment which enables them to focus on their own platform, the party will be stuck with bare majorities or worse. Progressives might not agree with these people, but representatives like Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) are an integral part of any Democratic Senate majority that wishes a durable hold on the body because even if there are enough progressive voters, there simply aren’t enough progressive states. For the Democratic Party, a big tent is necessary to maintain a governing coalition.
Andrew Morin is a freshman in the SFS from New York with interest in Congressional politics and foreign policy.