Current U.S. Senate Map

The following map shows the party affiliation of all 100 Senators. This map is current as of July 20, 2009. States colored Blue have 2 Democratic Senators (or 2 Senators who caucus with the Democrats, in the case of Connecticut and Vermont). States colored Red have 2 Republican Senators. States colored Purple have 1 Democratic and 1 Republican Senator.

There are 59 Democratic Senators and 41 Republican Senators.

Analysis

While it has been widely noted that since Democrats had 60 seats in the Senate, and had a filibuster-proof majority. This changed after the Massachusetts special senate election in January 2010, where the Republican won. In theory, that is correct, however it is important to remember that not every member of either the Democratic party or the Republican party is always going to vote in unison with their party. For example, many of the Democratic Senators that make up that total of 60 are moderate Democrats, who represent more conservative states than other Democratic Senators. In my opinion, while it may seem as though Democrats should be able to accomplish whatever they want (due to their 59-seat majority), that is not the case. In fact, moderate Democrats (and moderate Republicans) actually hold the power in the U.S. Senate.

An interesting thing about the map is that most of the purple states are also battleground states in Presidential Elections.