Constituent Representation Burdens on State Legislators
A Crude Analysis of State Representation
In February 2021 I saw on the front page of the Wall Street Journal all 400 New Hampshire state representatives social distancing by sitting on chairs spread across the lawn of the state capitol. What was meant to be a representation of the extremes of the COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be a revelation to the fact that New Hampshire has 400 representatives in their legislature (called the General Court by Granite Staters). My home state of Wisconsin has only 99 representatives and it’s four times the size of New Hampshire! This led me down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of various states’ legislatures (appalled at the fact that California only has 80). After gathering myself and closing the 50 tabs I had open on my web browser, I began processing this information. I present to you an analysis of the United States’ fifty state legislatures.
To begin, we must define a state legislature. Most states in the union are governed by a bicameral legislature with two “houses”, or separate assemblies of representatives. Most often these two houses are known as the House of Representatives (the lower house) and the Senate (the upper house), mirroring the federal government. Some states (Wisconsin, for example) prefer to call their lower house the Assembly. Fewer states (in fact only one state: Nebraska) take a different approach entirely and defer their lawmaking to a unicameral legislature in which there is only one chamber(members call themselves senators). For the purposes of this analysis, any member in either of the houses will be defined as a representative. Populations for each state were taken from the United States Census Bureau’s 2020 census data.
The metric with which I will be assessing each state’s ability to represent their people is their “representative burden”. Representative burden (RB) is equal to the total state population divided by the total number of representatives in the state’s legislature. (To be sure, most legislative maps have overlapping districts with representatives and senators. For uniformity and simplicity in this discussion, we will be using a simple model of representation without overlapping districts.) For example, Wisconsin’s 2020 population was 5,893,718. The state’s legislature is filled with 132 representatives (99 in the Assembly and 33 in the Senate). Therefore, Wisconsin’s RB is 44,649.38 con/rep (constituents per representative). That is, each member of the state legislature is responsible for the representation of approx. 44,649 Wisconsinites. Using this metric throughout the country, we get the following results outlined in Table 1. For your sake and my own, Table 2 sorts these results from high RB to low RB. The mean RB in the US is 45,551.48 con/rep, whereas the median is 32,754.28 con/rep. Georgia is the most average state (RB = 45,389.44 con/rep) and Maryland and Kentucky serve as the beginning of the upper half and end of the lower half of states, respectively (Table 2).
Interesting points can be easily viewed on an XY axis (Figure 1). A national average line is plotted (y=45551x). States above the line are underrepresented; that is, they have a higher RB and thus have more constituents per representative. States at points below the national average line, on the other hand, are overrepresented. They have a lower RB indicative of a lower constituent per representative count.
This analysis is meant to shine light on the various systems of representation amongst the United States and by no means is meant to suggest changes to legislative structure. The federalist agreement within the states allows members of the union to charter their own constitutions and design their own governments. Further analysis not conducted here is necessary to determine if there are any correlations between RB and legislator burnout, constituent satisfaction, or prosperity. I propose a future simple correlation study of constituent contacts (phone calls, emails, letters) and RB to further justify the use of “burden” in this context. I’m sure we would find that while Californian legislators are busy with their 329,483.19 constituents, the members of the New Hampshire General Court are satisfied with handling their 3,248.89.
Table 1. Raw data of state legislatures, population, representative burden (constituents per representative (rep)), and referenced legislative website. RB is heat-coded where higher RB is red and lower RB is green.
Table 2. Refined RB analysis sorted by high to low. RB is heat-coded where higher RB is red and lower RB is green. Mean and median lines are placed approximately where they would lie in ranking (units = constituents/representative).
Figure 1. XY scatter plot of each state’s total state representatives (x) and 2020 population (y) with certain outliers labeled. A national average line is plotted (y=45551x). Points (states) above this line are underrepresented whereas those below the line are overrepresented (in relation to the national average.
