Statistics can be unbelievably hard!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2023

How many non-"whites" in the Senate? The Washington Post's Dan Balz has had a long and extremely sane journalistic career.

We met him once, up in New Hampshire, during the week of the 2000 primary. We were introduced by Mary Matalin as part of an impossibly chic Manchester, New Hampshire bar scene.

Balz quickly expressed a bit of annoyance with the Daily Howler. "We don't think we've ever criticized you," we quickly and skillfully said.

The scribe acknowledged the truth of that statement. Later, we occasionally did criticize some of his work, but the incidences have been few and far between.

As of this morning, Balz and two colleagues have offered a weirdly complex analysis of who does and doesn't get represented in the United States Senate. The lengthy "Imperfect Union" piece appears beneath these dual headlines:

The hidden biases at play in the U.S. Senate
People of color get significantly less representation than White voters. And that’s not the only way the Senate is skewed.

The essay starts by noting one well-known way that the U.S. Senate is "skewed." We refer to the way the very small (population) states get the same two (2) senators that the very big states do.

California gets two U.S. senators, and so does Wyoming! Given current geographic demography—at present, the smaller states tend to be red—this gives the Republican Party a major advantage in the biannual search for control of the Senate.

This fact has become fairly well known within the blue tribe world over the past twenty years. We were puzzled when Balz et al. moved on to a second topic—the topic of representation in the Senate on the basis of race.

Statistics can be hard! We were puzzled, in several ways, just when we came upon this:

BALZ ET AL (11/17/23): America was hardly a diverse nation when it was founded in the late 18th century, certainly not in the way we think of it today. According to the 1790 census, the population numbered 3.9 million people, 81 percent of them White. Enslaved Blacks counted as only three-fifths of a citizen and had no right to vote. Women could not vote. Indigenous people at the time lived as semi-independent nations.

We were struck by the various ways that presentation was fuzzy. Consider:

In 1790, the population was 3.9 million people, 81 percent of whom were white. Presumably, that means that 19 percent of the population wasn't white.

That said:

Were native Americans ("indigenous people") counted in that 3.9 million and in that 19 percent? It sounds like they weren't, but the presentation isn't completely clear on that point.

Meanwhile, how about "enslaved Blacks?" Presumably, they were included in that 3.9 million, and in that 19 percent. But were they counted as whole people, or (imaginably) only as three-fifths? 

It seemed to us that that presentation was unnecessarily fuzzy. That said, we were completely baffled by the presentation which came next:

BALZ ET AL (continuing directly): Today, in a country of more than 330 million people, Whites, at 59 percent, remain in the majority. But the demographic composition of the country is changing, with non-White groups growing faster than the White population. By 2044, according to estimates, America will be a majority-minority nation.

And the most populous states, with few exceptions, also happen to be the most diverse. California is 40 percent Hispanic, 34 percent White, 16 percent Asian and 6.5 percent Black, according to the 2020 census. Wyoming is 83 percent White. This racial disparity between the most and least populous states has created a dramatic imbalance in terms of who is represented in the Senate.

White Americans are significantly overrepresented in the Senate today—by 14 percent, according to The Post’s analysis. An examination of the nation’s most and least populous states helps explain why: Whites make up 46 percent of the population of the five most populous states, but they account for 78 percent of the population of the five least populous states. Similarly, Hispanics make up 31 percent of the population in the five most populous states but 5 percent in the five least populous states.

We haven't made any deletions. Here's what we don't get:

According to that passage, "white" Americans are currently 59 percent of the population. That said, such people are "significantly overrepresented in the Senate today—by 14 percent."

We have no idea what that means. In the most simple-minded sense, it would seem to mean that 73 percent of the Senate is white, with 27 percent non-white.

Plainly, that would seem to be wildly inaccurate. In February 2021, Axios counted eleven non-white members of the Senate. Scrolling through the list of current members, that number seems unchanged today.

(For whatever it may be worth, it's possible that some Hispanic members of the Senate may also identify as white.)

Over-representation of the small population states is a major element in present-day Senate politics. It also might be interesting to examine the under-representation of various racial and ethnic groups within the modern-day Senate.

That said, Balz and his colleagues ran these topics together in a fairly bewildering, highly complicated report. Most strikingly, what did they mean when they said that white people are over-represented in the Senate by 14 percent?

We don't have the slightest idea—and no, we don't see where they explain the claim. Even at the top of the mainstream press corps, statistics can be very hard!

As best we can tell—and employing the standard demographic categories—white Americans are 59 percent of the population, but 89 percent of the Senate. 

What did the journalists mean by their alternate claim? Go ahead—be our guest! Maybe you'll be able to puzzle it out!

(For the record, Dan Balz has had a long and very sane career. The Granite State primary to which we've referred was won by Candidates Gore and McCain.)