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Counties and Cities with the Most Influence on Our Federal Elections

Peter Horton

Note: The analysis discussed in this article can be played with interactively here.

Most Populous American Cities in 2020

According to the 2020 Census, the largest cities in the United States were as follows:

  1. New York, NY – 8.80 million people
  2. Los Angeles, CA – 3.90 million people
  3. Chicago, IL – 2.75 million people
  4. Houston, TX – 2.30 million people
  5. Phoenix, AZ – 1.60 million people
  6. Philadelphia, PA – 1.60 million people
  7. San Antonio, TX – 1.43 million people
  8. San Diego, CA – 1.39 million people
  9. Dallas, TX – 1.30 million people
  10. San Jose, CA – 1.30 million people

Something that is perhaps counterintuitive is that even though these are the ten largest cities in the country, they do not necessarily have the most influence on our nation’s federal elections.

Influence on Federal Elections

The question of influence is essentially if you could be a party boss in a particular city, what city would generally get you the farthest nationally?

This is because “influence” depends up what state a city is in, what percentage of that state’s population is in the city, and how the state fared in congressional reapportionment in terms of people per representative. In a perfectly democratic system, “influence” would be equal to a cities’ percent of nationwide population, but our system is not intended to be perfectly democratic.

Calculating Influence

Calculating “influence” is done by equally-weighting the share of reps across Senatorial, Congressional and Presidential elections. As an example, a state with 2 Senators (out of 100 total), 3 Congressional representatives (out of 435 total) and 5 electoral college electors (out of 538 total) would have an influence of 1.2%. This should make sense as the state has 2% of Senators, .6% of Congressional Representatives, and .9% of electoral college electorates.

(1/3)((2/100) + (3/435) + (5/538)) = ~1.2%

To calculate this for a city, you take the city’s percentage population of the entire state and re-run the calculation using fractional representatives. Intuitively, this says that a city that constitutes 75% of a states’ population “has” 1.5 Senators, whereas a city that is only 10% of a states’ population “has” .2 Senators.

This method is admittedly imperfect, as a city that constituted 75% of a states’ population could probably elect any 2 Senators it wanted to if it voted as a block, and redistricting could in theory keep a city with two representatives from being the majority voting block for any representative , but we’re going with it 🙂

Most Influential American Cities in 2020

When you re-run the numbers on cities (in this case 2020 Census Places), the numbers turn out quite differently.

  1. New York, NY – 1.91% influence (8.80 million people)
  2. Los Angeles, CA – .79% influence (3.90 million people)
  3. Chicago, IL – .67% influence (2.75 million people)
  4. Houston, TX – .48% influence (2.30 million people)
  5. Phoenix, AZ – .46% influence (1.60 million people)
  6. Philadelphia, PA – .39% influence (1.60 million people)
  7. Anchorage Municipality, AK – .37% influence (291k people)
  8. Albuquerque, NM – .32% influence (565k people)
  9. Omaha, NE – .32% influence (486k people)
  10. San Antonio, TX – .30% (1.43 million people)

While the top 6 cities stay the same, Anchorage, Albuquerque and Omaha make the list, primarily due to their relatively large share of the population in AK, NM, and NE, as you can see in the image below.

If you’d like to play around with the numbers and sort by the various columns: check out the spreadsheet here.

DC – Taxation without Representation?

DC is particularly interesting, in that its influence of .19% isn’t all that much lower than its nationwide population percentage and there are similarly sized cities roughly as influential.

In fact, on a per-person basis, voters in DC are actually more “influential” per capita than voters in 11 states. This is because DC having 3 electoral college electors as a city of only 689,545 (.55% of electors despite being only .21% of the total population) is disproportionate enough to make up for the lack of Senators or voting Congressional representative. Although DC is still under the average ratio of influence to nationwide population pct (which is 1), there are 11 states with an even lower ratio.

Most Populous Counties in 2020

Per the 2020 Census, the most populous counties were as follows:

  1. Los Angeles County, CA – 10.01 million people
  2. Cook County, IL – 5.28 million people
  3. Harris County, TX – 4.73 million people
  4. Maricopa County, AZ – 4.42 million people
  5. San Diego County, CA – 3.30 million people
  6. Orange County, CA – 3.19 million people
  7. Kings County, NY – 2.74 million people
  8. Miami-Dade County, FL – 2.70 million people
  9. Dallas County, TX – 2.61 million people
  10. Riverside County, CA – 2.42 million people

Most Influential Counties in 2020

Crunching the “influence” numbers gives you:

  1. Los Angeles County, CA – 2.03% influence (10.01 million people)
  2. Cook County, IL – 1.30% (5.28 million people)
  3. Maricopa County, AZ – 1.26% (4.42 million people)
  4. Harris County, TX – .98% (4.73 million people)
  5. Clark County, NV – .98% (2.27 million people)
  6. Honolulu County, HI – .75% (1.02 million people)
  7. San Diego County, CA – .67% (3.30 million people)
  8. Orange County, CA – .64% (3.19 million people)
  9. Providence County, RI – .64% (660k people)
  10. Kings County, WA – .64% (2.27 million people)

The top 15, as you can see here.

While the method is definitely imperfect, it does flag the importance of New Castle County to American politics, where Joe Biden began his political career many years ago.

Imperfectly Democratic

In the Senate, the 643,077 people living in Vermont, per the 2020 Census, elect and are represented by 2 Senators, whereas in California, any group of 643,077 people will only comprise a small fraction of the 39,538,223 people who elect and represented by the state’s 2 Senators, per the 2020 Census.

The disparity is somewhat smaller for Congressional races. In terms of apportionment population, the lowest ratio of people to representative is in Montana, where there are 542,704 people for each of its 2 House Representatives. The highest ratio is in Delaware, where there are 990,837 people for Delaware’s lone representative. The apportionment population used to determine the number of representatives in a state is slightly different from a state’s total population, as it includes count of U.S. military and federal civilian employees (and their dependents) living overseas allocated to their home state.

For the Presidency, state’s vote for the number of electors equal to their number of Senators plus their number of representatives. DC, which elects neither a voting member of Congress nor a Senator, votes for 3 electors.

Notes

To be perhaps more accurate, this analysis could incorporate a city’s percentage of voting eligible or participating voter population and the subtle nuances for electoral college electors in NE and ME.

Data from the 2020 Census via Redistricting Data Hub

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