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…
OK, I apologize if I've miscategorized or oversimplified a couple of members, but as far as I can tell, this is pretty much the difference between the parties in the House of Representatives. pic.twitter.com/noKiTanzAL
— Charles #GetCovered-ba (@charles_gaba) December 29, 2019
…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:
However, it's entirely conceivable that the GOP House Caucus, which currently has just 13 women, could be down to as few as 7…and as few as 12 members who aren't White Men.
— Charles #GetCovered-ba (@charles_gaba) December 29, 2019
Finally, I added a third pie chart showing the rough breakout of the U.S. population who these folks are supposed to be representing:
A few folks have asked for my sources, which is reasonable…but there's no trick to it…here you go.https://t.co/OKPpoXSNjIhttps://t.co/WVhoaq5XPOhttps://t.co/XmHI44NejThttps://t.co/miNsPR5yEu
— Charles #GetCovered-ba (@charles_gaba) December 30, 2019
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).
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Written by Charles Gaba (Brainwrap) at Daily Kos.
