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Counties don't vote and Trump's popular vote "mandate" is smaller than Clinton's popular vote win in 2016. Here's a fun stat: literally 40 states have a popula

Counties don't vote and Trump's popular vote "mandate" is smaller than Clinton's popular vote win in 2016. Here's a fun stat: literally 40 states have a population that is less than the population of Los Angeles county alone. Why doesn't Los Angeles itself have 80 senators? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia... Setting aside 2000 and 2016 (EC winners lost the popular vote), you'd have to go back to 1968 and Nixon's squeaker of an election over Humphrey to find a closer popular vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...

genewitch 2y ago
Out of curiosity, do you recall seeing a "county map" of the blue votes in the 2020 election?
- kemayo 2y ago
  Why would we have? It's pointless. As the GP said, land doesn't vote. The more interesting map is the one where you weight the display by population, since it gives a much more accurate representation of how the USA is divided: https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/d3Electoral/countyelection2.png https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/d3Electoral/countyel... The tool on that website is actually pretty informative to play with if you want to quickly see how adjusting the map style can change the perception. https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-population/ https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-popul...
  - verzali 2y ago
    Bit of a tangent, but I've always wondered why the United States has a very clear dividing line between the populated east and relatively empty west. It's really visible in the first map you shared. Is there a historical reason behind that line? Or some geographical boundary?
    - genewitch 2y ago
      My understanding, as an american, is that the Federal government "owns" most of the land west of either the Mississippi River or the Sabine. Or used to "own" it. So getting land for personal/business use in that geographic region is harder than eastward. I don't know the term of art, but it's like the Federal Government - via the BLM, USDA, USFS, or whatever - has right of first refusal for all land sales. I know that my understanding can be wrong, but this is what i've heard and perusing some maps bears out at least some validity.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      It is a function of both geography and history, both based on water. The line you are seeing in the east is the rain shadow of the Rocky mountains. Moving east from California, you have the great basin desert, followed by the Rocky Mountains, and then the relatively dry great plains. Population follows precipitation. https://gisgeography.com/us-precipitation-map/ https://gisgeography.com/us-precipitation-map/ https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-shapes-us-regional-weather-3444371 https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-shapes-us-regional-weath...
  - madcaptenor 2y ago
    Not sure why I can't reply to the sibling comment... anyway, the reason for the east/west divide in population density is that the west is dry. See maps at climate.gov (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/new-maps-annual-average-temperature-and-precipitation-us-climate https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/new-ma...). By convention people refer to this line as being at the "100th meridian" but the 98th may be more accurate.
- danorama 2y ago
  I don’t personally recall, but it’s kind of a silly idea to break down presidential votes by county anyway. At least counting states matters legally in elections. And counting people matters as a way to judge desires and sentiments. Counting by counties combines the unrepresentativeness of the Electoral College with the legal irrelevance of the popular vote.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  If you include Alaska, which is a huge state (I hear bigger than Texas), land starts voting very blue due to Alaskan native influence. They don’t have counties though, just boroughs (Alaska still goes red even if it’s land goes blue due to population distribution).
  - genewitch 2y ago
    Louisiana doesn't have counties, either. I live in Louisiana, and when i said "counties" i included the parishes in my state, and any other geographically distinct entity of the same legal merit. there are 3300 counties in the US. People live in all of those counties.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      There are only a few boroughs in Alaska but some of them are larger than Texas.
- aaronbrethorst 2y ago
  Did you know that there are about 2,160 counties across these 40 states that collectively have a smaller population than Los Angeles county? Who cares about a "county map"?
  - genewitch 2y ago
    people who don't live in Los Angeles might be curious why their neighbors suddenly switched to voting red. why is everyone assuming that i'm not intelligent enough to know that "land doesn't vote"? The county voting maps are a proxy.
    - danorama 2y ago
      Because they’re a meaningless proxy?
      - genewitch 2y ago
        it tells you that your neighbors voted for trump, and we might ask why. It isn't meaningless, if you live in a historically "blue" county and it went red, why did it go red? I understand that counties can have various sub-regions and cultures and all of that, but not every county does. there's 3300 counties, and people live in all of them. Knowing that your neighbors voted for Trump might incline introspection. at least that's what i hoped i could point out. Apparently shoot the messenger!
skissane 2y ago
> Here's a fun stat: literally 40 states have a population that is less than the population of Los Angeles county alone. Why doesn't Los Angeles itself have 80 senators? Because in a federal system it is often considered important to provide the less populous states with some protection against the more populous states always getting their way. The US Constitution does this by balancing representation based on population (the House) with equal representation of each state (the Senate). The US is not the only federal constitution to do this - the Australian constitution has the same design (indeed, copied off the American model), except having 6 states instead of 50, Australia went with 12 senators per a state instead of only 2 - hence Tasmania (population 571,200) gets 12 senators, and so does New South Wales (population 8.153 million). Things don’t have to be this way - instead of a federation one could have a unitary system. But in the case of both countries, protecting the power of the smaller states was considered important at the time of the constitution’s drafting - and the smaller states likely would not have agreed to it otherwise Where it is different, is Australia doesn’t have the same “red state” vs “blue state” dynamic the US does. In Australia, while some states lean more one way than the other, they essentially all are “swing states”
- aaronbrethorst 2y ago
  "in a federal system it is often considered important" by whom? Definitely not James Madison who only grudgingly accepted this framework in Federalist No 62: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp
  - skissane 2y ago
    > by whom? Well, both by the majority of the drafters of the US Constitution, and the majority of the drafters of the Australian Constitution. And the authors of the German Constitution – the German upper house, the Bundesrat, represents the German states (Länder), and although (unlike the Australian and US Senates) it does give more populous states a greater number of seats, the number of seats is still out of proportion to population: in Bremen there are 223,830 people per a seat, compared to 2,977,586 people per a seat in North Rhine-Westphalia. And the authors of the Swiss Constitution – the Swiss upper house (Council of States) gives two seats each to twenty of the country's cantons, and one seat each to the other six (which six are traditionally referred to as "half-cantons") And I'm sure I could dig up more examples – globally, the majority of federations have an upper house which provides, either equal representation to each state/province, or if not equal, then at least representation that deviates significantly from proportionality to population. > Definitely not James Madison who only grudgingly accepted this framework in Federalist No 62 I'm not sure if Madison should be interpreted as "only grudgingly" accepting this framework – but even if that's true (Madison was very much an advocate of centralized power and supporter the interests of the big states over that of the smaller states), many of the other delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention viewed it more positively, even as a necessity – the majority of delegates agreed to the Constitution containing this provision, and it is unlikely such a majority would have if it had been ommitted.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> why doesn't Los Angeles itself have 80 senators? The electoral college internally balances the power of a population against the difficulty of holding land. Look at New York State, where NYC mostly holds court. If it were a country you’d see rebellion. Because while the city outnumbers the country, it’s culturally more similar to itself than the country, and that in practice leaves lots of people disenfranchised. (Personally, I think the President should be popularly elected. But the Senate should continue resembling our geography.)
- int_19h 2y ago
  Even if you buy into the whole notion of "representing geography", the problem is that state boundaries ceased to be representative of any meaningful kind of political distinction a long time ago, as evidenced by the massive red/blue splits in many states. It's not just NY - you can see the same thing in other large states, e.g. in WA where the split is geographical within state boundaries - west of the Cascades is very blue, east is very red. Nor is it unique to blue states - TX has the same exact issue with blue counties having a lot of population that is effectively not represented at all. Unless and until this is fixed, there's no meaningful "geographic representation" in the Senate, so it's strictly a negative.

genewitch 2y ago

Out of curiosity, do you recall seeing a "county map" of the blue votes in the 2020 election?

kemayo 2y ago
Why would we have? It's pointless. As the GP said, land doesn't vote. The more interesting map is the one where you weight the display by population, since it gives a much more accurate representation of how the USA is divided: https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/d3Electoral/countyelection2.png https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/d3Electoral/countyel... The tool on that website is actually pretty informative to play with if you want to quickly see how adjusting the map style can change the perception. https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-population/ https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-popul...
- verzali 2y ago
  Bit of a tangent, but I've always wondered why the United States has a very clear dividing line between the populated east and relatively empty west. It's really visible in the first map you shared. Is there a historical reason behind that line? Or some geographical boundary?
  - genewitch 2y ago
    My understanding, as an american, is that the Federal government "owns" most of the land west of either the Mississippi River or the Sabine. Or used to "own" it. So getting land for personal/business use in that geographic region is harder than eastward. I don't know the term of art, but it's like the Federal Government - via the BLM, USDA, USFS, or whatever - has right of first refusal for all land sales. I know that my understanding can be wrong, but this is what i've heard and perusing some maps bears out at least some validity.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    It is a function of both geography and history, both based on water. The line you are seeing in the east is the rain shadow of the Rocky mountains. Moving east from California, you have the great basin desert, followed by the Rocky Mountains, and then the relatively dry great plains. Population follows precipitation. https://gisgeography.com/us-precipitation-map/ https://gisgeography.com/us-precipitation-map/ https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-shapes-us-regional-weather-3444371 https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-shapes-us-regional-weath...
- madcaptenor 2y ago
  Not sure why I can't reply to the sibling comment... anyway, the reason for the east/west divide in population density is that the west is dry. See maps at climate.gov (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/new-maps-annual-average-temperature-and-precipitation-us-climate https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/new-ma...). By convention people refer to this line as being at the "100th meridian" but the 98th may be more accurate.
danorama 2y ago
I don’t personally recall, but it’s kind of a silly idea to break down presidential votes by county anyway. At least counting states matters legally in elections. And counting people matters as a way to judge desires and sentiments. Counting by counties combines the unrepresentativeness of the Electoral College with the legal irrelevance of the popular vote.
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
If you include Alaska, which is a huge state (I hear bigger than Texas), land starts voting very blue due to Alaskan native influence. They don’t have counties though, just boroughs (Alaska still goes red even if it’s land goes blue due to population distribution).
- genewitch 2y ago
  Louisiana doesn't have counties, either. I live in Louisiana, and when i said "counties" i included the parishes in my state, and any other geographically distinct entity of the same legal merit. there are 3300 counties in the US. People live in all of those counties.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    There are only a few boroughs in Alaska but some of them are larger than Texas.
aaronbrethorst 2y ago
Did you know that there are about 2,160 counties across these 40 states that collectively have a smaller population than Los Angeles county? Who cares about a "county map"?
- genewitch 2y ago
  people who don't live in Los Angeles might be curious why their neighbors suddenly switched to voting red. why is everyone assuming that i'm not intelligent enough to know that "land doesn't vote"? The county voting maps are a proxy.
  - danorama 2y ago
    Because they’re a meaningless proxy?
    - genewitch 2y ago
      it tells you that your neighbors voted for trump, and we might ask why. It isn't meaningless, if you live in a historically "blue" county and it went red, why did it go red? I understand that counties can have various sub-regions and cultures and all of that, but not every county does. there's 3300 counties, and people live in all of them. Knowing that your neighbors voted for Trump might incline introspection. at least that's what i hoped i could point out. Apparently shoot the messenger!

skissane 2y ago

> Here's a fun stat: literally 40 states have a population that is less than the population of Los Angeles county alone. Why doesn't Los Angeles itself have 80 senators? Because in a federal system it is often considered important to provide the less populous states with some protection against the more populous states always getting their way. The US Constitution does this by balancing representation based on population (the House) with equal representation of each state (the Senate). The US is not the only federal constitution to do this - the Australian constitution has the same design (indeed, copied off the American model), except having 6 states instead of 50, Australia went with 12 senators per a state instead of only 2 - hence Tasmania (population 571,200) gets 12 senators, and so does New South Wales (population 8.153 million). Things don’t have to be this way - instead of a federation one could have a unitary system. But in the case of both countries, protecting the power of the smaller states was considered important at the time of the constitution’s drafting - and the smaller states likely would not have agreed to it otherwise Where it is different, is Australia doesn’t have the same “red state” vs “blue state” dynamic the US does. In Australia, while some states lean more one way than the other, they essentially all are “swing states”

aaronbrethorst 2y ago
"in a federal system it is often considered important" by whom? Definitely not James Madison who only grudgingly accepted this framework in Federalist No 62: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp
- skissane 2y ago
  > by whom? Well, both by the majority of the drafters of the US Constitution, and the majority of the drafters of the Australian Constitution. And the authors of the German Constitution – the German upper house, the Bundesrat, represents the German states (Länder), and although (unlike the Australian and US Senates) it does give more populous states a greater number of seats, the number of seats is still out of proportion to population: in Bremen there are 223,830 people per a seat, compared to 2,977,586 people per a seat in North Rhine-Westphalia. And the authors of the Swiss Constitution – the Swiss upper house (Council of States) gives two seats each to twenty of the country's cantons, and one seat each to the other six (which six are traditionally referred to as "half-cantons") And I'm sure I could dig up more examples – globally, the majority of federations have an upper house which provides, either equal representation to each state/province, or if not equal, then at least representation that deviates significantly from proportionality to population. > Definitely not James Madison who only grudgingly accepted this framework in Federalist No 62 I'm not sure if Madison should be interpreted as "only grudgingly" accepting this framework – but even if that's true (Madison was very much an advocate of centralized power and supporter the interests of the big states over that of the smaller states), many of the other delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention viewed it more positively, even as a necessity – the majority of delegates agreed to the Constitution containing this provision, and it is unlikely such a majority would have if it had been ommitted.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> why doesn't Los Angeles itself have 80 senators? The electoral college internally balances the power of a population against the difficulty of holding land. Look at New York State, where NYC mostly holds court. If it were a country you’d see rebellion. Because while the city outnumbers the country, it’s culturally more similar to itself than the country, and that in practice leaves lots of people disenfranchised. (Personally, I think the President should be popularly elected. But the Senate should continue resembling our geography.)

int_19h 2y ago
Even if you buy into the whole notion of "representing geography", the problem is that state boundaries ceased to be representative of any meaningful kind of political distinction a long time ago, as evidenced by the massive red/blue splits in many states. It's not just NY - you can see the same thing in other large states, e.g. in WA where the split is geographical within state boundaries - west of the Cascades is very blue, east is very red. Nor is it unique to blue states - TX has the same exact issue with blue counties having a lot of population that is effectively not represented at all. Unless and until this is fixed, there's no meaningful "geographic representation" in the Senate, so it's strictly a negative.