Sorry, Delaware, America’s most underrepresented state
Congratulations for losing the state population lottery, 70 years and counting.
Some of the smallest details in our democracy can have some of the largest impacts. In this story, we dive into apportionment for the U.S. House of Representatives. We’ll use US Census data to show that Delaware has been the most underrepresented state in the US, 70 years and counting.
What is this all about?
Every US middle school student is taught the basic knowledge about the US Congress. The USCIS has a handout with the following summary:
The U.S. Senate has 100 members. There are two members from each state. […]
and
The U.S. House of Representatives has 435 voting members. […] The number of representatives from each state depends on the population of the state.
It would be great to leave it here and call it a day, but this second statement leads to a headache that isn’t typically covered in a middle school classroom: the fraction of people residing in each state doesn’t lead to an integer assignment of seats.
For example, the population of California is 39.24MM people, which is 11.823% of the 331.9MM people in the U.S. Based on this alone, California should be assigned 51.43…
