Today on C-SPAN, Senator Joe Biden is making/has just made a speech on the proposed rule change on filibusters of judicial nominations - the "nuclear option." He made an interesting statement, that "we [i.e. Democrats] represent the majority of the American people." This is interesting and true, and deserves more explanation.
One way to calculate this is to add up the total number of votes cast for Democratic and Republican Senate candidates for the last three elections, a period of time in which all 100 Senate seats have come up for election once. That total is:
Dem 100,494,879 (51%)
Rep 97,276,977 (49%)
Here are details of the calculation:
http://clerk.house.gov/members/electionInfo/2004/Table.htm
http://clerk.house.gov/members/electionInfo/2002/Table.htm
http://clerk.house.gov/members/electionInfo/2000/Table.htm
Year R D
2004 39920562 44754618
2002 20630984 18959386
2000 36725431 36780875