Congressional Elections: Constitutional Framework

For Monday,  Carson & Jacobson ch. 3.

Questions on the paper due Friday?

For this week's writeup: midterm review.  Are there any new topics (not on syllabus) you want to discuss or old topics you want to revisit?  Any other suggestions for the course?

Brief (one-minute) presentations of your research:  your candidate strategy or election prediction.

The Senate and the Constitution

• Article I, section 3
• 17th Amendment -- popular elections and replacement

Two seats per state

• Countermajoritarianism -- more from internal procedures than malapportionment (over history about 12% of roll calls resulted in a majority vote from states with a minority of population)
• In the 119th Congress, the 47 senators in the Democratic caucus (45 Democrats and 2 Independents) represent roughly 179.1 million people, or about 53% of the U.S. population, even though they are in a 47–53 minority in the Senate.
• Democratic Caucus Population: ~179.1 million people (53%)
• Republican ConferencePopulation: ~155.1 million people (47%)

Staggered Senate elections and the 6-year cycle.

• A class that undergoes a large partisan shift in a presidential year faces reelection in a midterm -- and vice versa.  Very often, the political climate can change substantially.
• Democrats surged in the Watergate midterm of 1974, then lost their majority to the Republicans in the Reagan landslide of 1980. Republicans lost their Senate majority in 1986.
• And the party holding the vice presidency gets the tiebreaking vote.

The 2026 map:

House districts

• Reapportionment and redistricting are two different things.
• With the law (not the Constitution) fixing the size of the House at 435, seat changes hinge on relative population changes.
• In 2025-26, unusual mid-decade redistricting (Carson & Jacobson 15-17).
• PRONOUNCE GERRYMANDER WITH A HARD G!!!
• Gerrymandering game: cracking and packing
• Partisan opinion depends on who is doing the gerrymander. Note p. 10 on building minority coalitions -- ulterior motive of "bleaching"

Racial Gerrymandering update to p. 17:  the Callais decision