41-Senator Blockade Represents Merely 36.4% of US Population

The US Senate is a disproportionate representative body. Every state in the union gets 2 senators, regardless of population. So, different senators have differently sized constituencies. US territories and the District of Columbia have US citizens as residents but are not entitled to a senator in the US Senate.

A caucus of 41 of the 100 Senators is able to block all new legislation through a Senate procedural rule nicknamed the filibuster. There has been a renewal in the criticism of this rule, and more Americans now favor changing the rule. Critics argue that it is counter-democratic, makes the Senate favor inaction over action, and was intended to be a rarely-used procedure.

However, perhaps the real problem is that the Senate does not represent all US citizens, and some citizens enjoy a greater representation in the Senate than others. The 41% of the Senate most commonly responsible for grinding the post-Brown 111th Senate to a halt, and planning to continue to do so until the November 2011 election, are representatives of a mere 36.4% of the population. The remaining 59 senators, with the party affiliations Democratic, Independent, and Independent Democratic, are representatives of 62.0% of the population. These numbers do not add to 100.0 because over 5 million American citizens, 1.6%, do not have a Senator to protect their interests.

Party	Count	Population	Percent of represented	Percent of Total
Democratic	53	185065043.5	60.40%	59.43%
Democratic-Farmer-Labor	2	5266214	1.72%	1.69%
Democratic-NPL	2	646844	0.21%	0.21%
Independent	1	310880	0.10%	0.10%
Independent Democratic	1	1759144	0.57%	0.56%
Democratic caucus ex. Lieberman	58	191288981.5	62.43%	61.43%
Total Democratic Caucus	59	193048125.5	63.00%	61.99%
Republican	41	113358767.5	37.00%	36.40%
Represented in Senate		306406893		98.39%
Unrepresented in Senate	0	5009490		1.61%
Total		311416383

Population figures source (2009 projection)
Senator party affiliation source

If the voting power of Senators were proportional to population, then the Democratic Caucus would have 63.0 votes, a net gain of 4 senators. That would be enough to defeat any Republican filibuster without changing the Senate rules. Without Joe Lieberman, a demonstrably unreliable partner for the Democrats, the voting sum of the caucus would fall slightly to 62.4. If senators were added from regions of the country whose residents currently are not entitled to a senator, it is difficult to predict how the proportions would change. But, I imagine it would help the Democratic caucus more than the obstructionist caucus.