Most of the attention paid to political geography this year has focused on the presidential race and the shrinking number of swing states that will decide the race. The impact of America’s geography and its effects on how Americans are represented, however, runs much deeper, impacting the balance of power in Congress and state legislatures.
The two top presidential candidates have spent the bulk of their time in seven states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada — because other states are so skewed toward Democrats or Republicans that they are relatively uncompetitive.
This election marks a historic low point in the number of competitive states in a presidential election. In 2020, eight states were decided by fewer than five points, down from 11 in 2016. In 2004, there were also 11 competitive states, and in 1992, there were 17 states where the winner was decided by fewer than five points.
David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College, told Salon that the “continued shrinking of the electoral battleground” in 2024 is one of the biggest stories he’s following in how geography affects Americans’ representation.
“The fact that we have an election that is so close nationally but we have only seven states that are in play is a historic low point,” Hopkins said.
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Hopkins explained that the shirking of the electoral battleground comes down to the shifting coalitions that make up the Democratic and Republican parties and how, in recent history, the driver behind electoral trends has mainly been shifting party identifications and voting patterns among white Americans.
According to the American National Election Studies Cumulative File, Democrats have gone from having a net 11-point advantage over Republicans in terms of party affiliation among white voters in 1980 to a net 16-point deficit among white voters in 2020. Over the same period, net party affiliation among nonwhite voters has swung back and forth in some elections but has not significantly trended in either direction.
In Hopkins’ assessment, the most obvious way this has distorted representation in the United States is in the Senate, where Republicans have come........