Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

by Steven Levitsky

Commentators today frequently describe our national political system as stalemated between two evenly matched parties. Scholars and pundits alike tell us that a major source of America’s democratic ills—for example, polarization and gridlock—is an unusual degree of partisan “parity.” Presidential elections are determined by razor-thin margins; the U.S. Senate is evenly split. But such claims obscure the fact that parity is manufactured by our institutions. Electoral College outcomes are indeed decided by the narrowest of margins, and the two parties’ seat shares in the Senate are closely matched. But when we look at American voters, we find less parity: the Democratic Party has, as we have noted, won the popular vote in all but one presidential election since the 1980s and every six-year cycle in the Senate since the 1990s. That’s anything but parity. Parity in Washington emerges only after our votes pass through the distortionary channels of our institutions.