Yes. For example, it’s true that at least half of the Austrian population lives in nine of its states. (Then again, it’s also trivially true, because Austria has only nine states.)
Due to the “angle” the east coast forms, Atlanta is remarkably close to a good sized fraction of the eastern US population.
It was a significant rail hub early on. Hence it was a major target during the Civil War.
The interstates and air routes just added to this. Some data.
Of course there is sort of a loop thing going on. Atlanta gets big due to big populations in the larger region. But many of those, like Cincinnati, are big because …
(The rest of Georgia is just along for the ride. :))
Georgia also happens to be the largest state east of the Mississippi.
Which highlights the political importance of concentrated populations. Those 9 states represent 45% of the electoral college–meaning the fates of 41 states are potentially dictated by the other 9. Same thing happens on a smaller scale within a state. Rural folks, who have a considerably different lifestyle and outlook from their metropolitan counterparts, are governed by people who appeal to urban values and issues. And there are plenty of indicators that they hate that.
You got that backward, Inigo.
The fate of the 9 most urbanized states is governed by rural people who are being taught to hate the elites: Rural states have a stranglehold on the Senate, one which is only going to get worse, and electoral college votes are also disproportionately weighed in rural state’s favor.
People have, for years, talked about the “forgotten” rural American, all the while ignoring their growing strength in a Republic designed to give voting power to land acreage, not people. What is actually going to happen is that 84% of the country’s population (the urban states) are going to get fucking sick and tired of being governed by rural states which hold them in contempt (kinda like… you know… today), and that’s when things are going to go down the shitter.
Or political impotence. 50% of the US population is represented by 18/100 senators. The other, far more rural 50% of the US population is represented by 82/100 senators.
One way to change that in favor of small states would be to abolish the electoral college (it could also be massively reformed, but that would be just as difficult procedurally). For example, Florida and South Dakota had the same net result in 2016 (Trump won both states by about 110k votes), but Florida got to contribute 29 electoral votes to their chosen candidate, while South Dakota only got to contribute 3.
Florida has more than 20 times the population of South Dakota, so I think you mean South Dakota got to contribute 3 electoral votes while Florida only got 29.
Candidates would only need to campaign in those nine states.
No, that’s not what I mean at all. The fact that a 110k vote margin was multiplied by basically nothing in one state, but by a huge amount in another state, just because that other state has a higher total population, is bizarre and works against small states. The bias toward small states in the electoral college (but not the Senate) is very small in the current partisan system. It’s more than swamped by huge states walloping the small states by using winner-take-all allocation.
Because they are the most attractive states to live in. People tend to live where there is coastline or a major river, where there is access to other markets and population centers, where there is agriculture, and where terrain and weather are suitable to living.
I mean, this is hardly a unique thing. Far more than half Canada’s population lives in just two of its ten provinces. More than 60% of Australia’s population is in two states. Half the population of Mexico lives in just eight of its 32 states. Brazil has 27 states (if you count the Federal District) but you will find half of all Brazilians live in just five of them.
Ah. I see what you mean. You’re talking about a way to split the votes appropriately. I’m not sure that the current system works against small states specifically - it works against the nearly half of the voters in an evenly split state who find their states’ votes going to the candidate they didn’t prefer (and Florida was more evenly split than South Dakota).
Weather and access to the ocean - ports and commerce are a huge driver of population.
Yeah, Florida basically didn’t exist as a population center until 20th century technological advances made it possible to live on top of swampland (it was the 33rd most populous state in 1910, just edging out Maine, and Miami was a tiny rural outpost). Once that happened, people flocked there.
The old “80/20 rule” applies to more things than it doesn’t, it seems…
I wonder why Mississippi didn’t take off like Florida.
Zipf’s Law (mutatis mutandis). There is a thread on it.
Wait, I need to understand this. I believe 45% is less than half, so the nine states have less than half of the electoral votes (despite having more than half the population), but they’re governing the other 41?
Maybe my math is off, but it kind of seems to me that (especially once the Senate is accounted for) the rural folks are the ones telling the urban ones what to do.
Not according to this cite.
Wisconsin and Florida are a bit larger.
Florida has 8,436 miles of coastline and Mississippi has 359 miles.