What if Congress Was Like US?

Independently and in collaboration with local governments, business and not-for-profits in the Hudson Valley, the Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach's (CRREO) research mission is to: conduct studies on topics of regional interest; bring visibility and focus to these matters; foster communities working together to better serve citizenry; and advance the public interest in our region. In addition to Regional Education, a number of well established, regionally oriented New Paltz programs and activities have been assembled under the aegis of CRREO.

This series of maps poses the question: What if Congress was like us? Our government is a representative democracy. We send our elected officials to the Senate and the House of Representatives to represent our interests. The primary way our system selects for similarity is by geographic proximity: in the case of the Senate it is based on what State we live in, and for the House, each State is divvied up into congressional districts.

To answer the question above, we took the most recent census data available and the number of seats in each state, and created a profile for the House of Representatives for each State of what characteristics our representatives would have if they were proportional to the demographics of the people of that State. - See more at the Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach (CRREO)