Does Congress accurately represent American voters?

One criticism of Congress is that they do not accurately represent what the population wants. Although our political system is generally viewed as “democratic”, people may think that Congress doesn’t necessarily act upon what citizens vote for. One reason that this doubt is present in Americans minds is that Congress and the Senate do not accurately represent the demographics of the country. Diversity in America is far different than what is seen in Congress and the Senate. The question is even though different minorities are not represented in Congress and the Senate as much as they should, do they still represent the voting habits of the general population?

Many Americans may be lead to think that the Senate and Congress do not act in the interests of the population due to the demographic differences in the two houses. However, in recent years, diversity in Congress has been spreading, although it is still not fully representative of the American population. When Congress and the Senate representatives mirror the constituents that they are representing, it is called descriptive representation. If we are judging if Congress and the Senate accurately represent based off of descriptive representation, then the two houses are very unrepresentative of the population. For example, the 114th Congress (2015-2017) contained 108 women, which was a large step for the demographics of Congress, but since the population is roughly 50% women there is still very far to go. This is only one example of increased diversity in Congress today, with the number of minorities in Congress increasing. Minorities such as Asian Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Homosexuals all increasing. Like stated earlier, these minorities are all increasing in Congress, but they are also still not to the level that accurately represents the voting population.

There is one factor where we see little change in Congress, level of Income and Occupation. Members of Congress seem to be highly educated with elite prior occupations before being brought to Congress which gives reason to their high level of pay. This is a flaw when trying to achieve descriptive representation because a member of Congress will almost always be highly educated which equates to high income. In order to counter this misrepresentation that we see in Congress, Congress members need to be aware of all of the members that they are representing. This is often not the case because we don’t see much action in Congress when concerns of low-class citizens are brought to the table. The introduction of more minorities into Congress would obviously help the population be better represented. The question is now posed if Congress is doing a good or bad job representing the population given the present demographics of Congress.