Quotes from E.J. Dionne

To understand the impact of this combination of gerrymandering and the geographic factors, consider that Barack Obama received some 5 million more votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012 yet carried only 209 House districts. Romney carried 226.

Republicans won in 2010 and 2014 because some 40 million fewer Americans vote in midterms than in presidential elections, and a substantial majority of those 40 million is inclined toward the Democrats.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush carried 30 of the 50 states even as he lost the popular vote to Al Gore.

Translated into Senate votes, a minority share of the ballots would have yielded a filibuster-proof conservative majority based largely in the South and the Rocky Mountain West. The filibuster itself further increases the power of the smaller and mostly more conservative states: in principle, senators representing roughly 11 percent of the nation's population can produce the 41 votes now required to block action.