AWOL Republican Senators Represent a Minority of Oregon’s People, but Most of Its Land

The rural GOP senators are speaking for large, sparsely populated places that dwarf the Portland metro area.

Pack train in the Wallowa Mountains, Oregon. (Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers collection)

By most measures, the 11 Republican senators on the lam this week are a tyranny of the minority.

They represent slightly more than one-third of the state's 30 Senate districts. They represent over 1 million registered voters—that's roughly a third of the state's 2.7 million registered voters, according to May 2019 voter registration data from the Oregon secretary of state.

But they represent the majority of the state's geographic land area. That's because their districts are rural—and Senate districts are divided so each senator represents roughly the same number of people. So the rural GOP senators are speaking for large, sparsely populated places that dwarf the Portland metro area.

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