6 November

Governance is my profession. This is a fascinating graphic doing the rounds. It’s slightly misleading, there aren’t far fewer Republicans (red), they’re just spread out a lot more. And their Congress (peoples’ house) is apportioned according to population. Where it become anomalous is their Senate. Like ours, a States house. Each State gets 2 Senators, regardless of population. This leads to a curiosity. The 38 million people who live in the 22 least populous states of the US get 44 Senators. The 38 million people who live in California get 2. The Republicans will likely retain control of the Senate, for this reason, and block everything Biden most wants to do. This is why the Democrats always struggle to win the Senate, the same way for years Labor struggled to win Queensland, because of Joh’s rigging of their system to favour rural seats. Note that Australia has a similar system, the smaller States like Tassie get hugely disproportional influence in our Senate. These are the challenges of a federalist system, there are no black and white answers here. Federalism saved us from Covid 19 so far, by blocking a populist ‘open up’ federal government with State premiers.