Skip to content

The difference between the parties in 3 simple charts.

3 min read
Views:

OK, there’s nothing in these pie charts which we didn’t already know, but it’s still something else to see the contrast.

I’ve been pulling U.S. House of Representatives demographic data into a spreadsheet for my own purposes, and while I was at it I decided to run a couple of simple charts to visualize a few things. It started out looking like this…

…but as I noted in the thread, I stupidly lumped several other major groups in with “White” which obviously isn’t cool. I also originally used different color schemes for each chart, but several people noted that it’s much easier to compare if I used the same color scheme for each.

This led to the following expanded/modified version, which is going viral this morning:

Finally, I added a third pie chart showing the rough breakout of the U.S. population who these folks are supposed to be representing:

Racial/ethnic breakdowns of U.S. House by party
Racial/ethnic breakdowns of U.S. House by party

NOTE: The Dem/GOP charts don’t include Independent Justin Amash or the 4 currently Vacant seats (which were previously held by 2 Republican White Men, 1 Democratic White Woman and 1 Democratic Black Man respectively).

The charts also only include voting Representatives, not non-voting delegates. If they were included, I’d have to add:

Republican:

  • 1 Asian/Pacific Islander Woman (American Samoa)

Democratic:

  • 2 Black Women (District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands)
  • 1 Asian/Pacific Islander Man (Guam)

3rd Parties/Independents:

  • 1 Hispanic Woman (Puerto Rico)
  • 1 Asian/Pacific Islander Man (N. Mariana Islands)

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

As I note in the Twitter thread, I even looked at all 21 of the GOP’s non-white men members (yes, there’s only 21 total) to see what things could potentially look like a year from now.

Assuming all 177 of the GOP White Men either keep their seats or are replaced by another white male Republican (which I doubt will happen), and assuming NO Dem seats are flipped, it’s conceivable that those 21 could be cut as much as in half:

  • 7 of them are in swing districts (and two of those are retiring, which means even if the GOP nominee wins the general, they could still end up being replaced by…white men)
  • Martha Roby is retiring; while her seat is safe, 3 of the 4 Republicans running to replace her are…white men.
  • (Liz Cheney is almost certainly running for Senate, but if she does, she’ll almost certainly be replaced by Cynthia Lummis, another white woman, so no change there)

In other words, it’s conceivable that the GOP House Caucus, currently 89% white men (and 95% white overall) could increase to 94% white men (97% white overall).

–30–

Written by Charles Gaba (Brainwrap) at Daily Kos.

Comments



Print Friendly and PDF

Latest

Clicky