As of March 2021, there are 100 U.S. Senators (as there has been since the admission of Hawaii in 1959), 50 of whom are Democrats (or independents who caucus with the Democrats), and 50 of whom are Republicans. (Democratic Vice-president Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote, which gives control of the chamber to the Democrats.) However, the states represented by Democrats are altogether larger in population than those represented by Republicans. This graphic illustrates how.
Population figures are from 2019.
Copyright © 2021 Christopher L. Phan. This graphic may be copied/modified under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
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Population Data: Table 1. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2019 (NST-EST2019-01). U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. December 2019.
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2010-2019/state/totals/nst-est2019-01.xlsxRetrieved 2021-02-21. -
Senate Data: Senators of the 117th Congress. United State Senate
https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.xmlRetrieved 2021-02-21.
I intend to post the Python script that was used to generate this graphic at some point in the future.
