April 17, 2020
In this short analysis, we attempt to estimate the number of voters utterly locked out of representation: those who prefer one party but live in a district that is safe for the opposite party. We do so using the partisanship metric from Monopoly Politics along with estimates of eligible voter populations from the United States census. We find that approximately 70 million eligible voters are in that very situation. In a political system that prioritizes geography over all else, the only representative they can call “theirs” goes into Congress to vote against their political interests. This is a severe weakness of our winner-take-all system for electing Congress, one that is largely corrected by the adoption of a multi-winner fair representation system.