How representative are the representatives? The demographics of the U.S. Congress, broken down by party [OC].

Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by eccekevin
image showing How representative are the representatives? The demographics of the U.S. Congress, broken down by party [OC].

eccekevin on August 27th, 2020 at 16:17 UTC »

Religion Data: Pew - Faith on the Hill Pew Religious Survey,

Race/Ethinicity Data: Congressional Research Service, US Census

Gender Data: Congressional Research Service, US Census

Made with Excel

My notes:

-Data includes both the Senate and the House, for a total of 535 elected representatives (280 Dem and 255 Rep)

- By far and wide, the most underrepresented category in Congress is Unaffiliated/No religion/Atheists/Agnostics. While this group constitutes a whopping 25% of Americans (that's 1 in 4, or more than 80 million), only a single congressperson (Sinema - raised Mormon and currently non-affiliated with any religion) out of more than 500 is openly unaffiliated. This was according to Pew. Wikipedia reports 4 more) (although this seems to be less whether they are openly non affiliated with any religion or simply it is not known), but that's still a total of only 5. One does keep in mind that elected politicians are usually older, and older people are more religious (although even over 65 more than 13% of people are non-religious).

- Similarly to above, keep in mind the difference between population, citizens, and voters (especially because of age). Voters are going to be less ethnically diverse because they do not include non-citizen immigrants (recent immigration tends to be non-white) and because they are older. Additionally, older white voters tend to vote a lot, hence Congress is a bit more demographically representative of the voter pool than it is to the general population.

- The Democratic Party is fairly well represented among religious and ethnic minorities. Interestingly, Jews, Catholics, and African-Americans/Blacks tend to be over-represented in the Democratic party. This isn't a coincidence, as these groups were the core of the Dem party in the 20th century. And while many older Catholics have voted Republican recently, this has been adjusted with the influx of Latino Catholics in the Dem party.

- The 2 or more races/ethnicity is hard to quantify and represent, hence why it's currently lacking in my images. This is because I decided to represent each congressperson equally, so those with more than one ethnicity were split 50/50 among the bins. It's a small number anyways (they're all spelled out in the CRS document if you want to read through). Kamala for example is among these

-White Christian males makes up around ~23% of the population, but account for a whopping 85% of Republican representatives (and about 28% of Democratic representatives).

-Finally, this isn't meant to be in any way judgmental, political, or trying to make a point. I just was curious to look at how demographics are reflected in the US population and in each party's Congressional representation.

Jorddyy on August 27th, 2020 at 16:54 UTC »

So atheists are not represented at all in American politics?

jgrant68 on August 27th, 2020 at 18:15 UTC »

This is a great graphic. I was able to look at it and understand it without needing an explanation. Really good work!