The Senate's 46 Democrats got 20 million more votes than its 54 repugicans

by Dylan Matthews

On Tuesday, 33 US senators elected in November will be sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden — including 12 who are new to the chamber. The class includes 22 repugicans and 11 Democrats, a big reason why the repugican cabal has a 54-46 majority in the Senate overall.
But here's a crazy fact: those 46 Democrats got more votes than the 54 repugicans across the 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections. According to Nathan Nicholson, a researcher at the voting reform advocacy group FairVote, "the 46 Democratic caucus members in the 114th Congress received a total of 67.8 million votes in winning their seats, while the 54 repugican caucus members received 47.1 million votes."
Here's what that looks like in chart form:

This doesn't mean that the repugican majority is illegitimate or anything like that. Indeed, after 2008 and 2012, the tables were turned: Democrats had more Senate seats than their vote share suggested they should. The problem isn't that the deck is stacked in favor of repugicans. The problem is that the deck is stacked in favor of small states, which receive equal representation in the Senate despite dramatic variance in population. The Senate is a profoundly anti-democratic body and should be abolished.