Astead Herndon

Let's look at the relative voting power by state in the 2024 election.

The least populous states, places like Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, all of that has the highest relative voting power, if you think about the population of those states, to their electoral votes.

The smallest relative voting power belongs to populous states that don't get as many electoral votes.

Places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New York.

The second chart I'm going to show is about the Senate, because I think it takes the last problem and makes it a little more clear.

Because the Senate has two senators for every state, it is equally distributed in terms of representation.

Right?

Wrong.

The Senate actually shows how least populous states have more power and the racial and demographic impacts of that distribution.

Take a look at this chart that the Washington Post made in 2023.

It showed that one person in Wyoming had similar influence in the Senate to 68 people in California, 50 people in Texas, and 37 people in Florida.

And it's not just that the numbers don't add up.

It's that the type of people changes also.

Those 68 people in California who add up to one person in Wyoming, those are three black people, dozens of Hispanic folks, a dozen of Asian folks.

That's also true in places like Texas and Florida, which have higher representations of non-whites.

Because of the way the Senate's made up, those voices are almost intentionally suppressed.

The third chart, which might be the most important, is about how fewer competitive house districts there are overall.

In the 2026 cycle, there's only about 30 or so competitive house districts, which is a drastic decrease from 20, 30 years ago.

Check out this chart from G. Eliot Morris.

In 1976, there were more than 90 competitive house districts.