Talk:Classes of United States senators

Untitled
Dumb question: when writing about senators, is it proper to use "senators" or "Senators"? I've read that it should be capitalized only when used as a particular senator's title or when referring to the Senate itself. Otherwise, it shouldn't be. But even the Senate's own web site is inconsistent (bottom of compared to ). Thanks! wknight94 01:32, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * It appears to me that it's like you said. For example: Senator Johnson, but the senators are... I think. It does appear to be somewhat inconsistant. --Mathwizard1232 19:54, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Extreme imbalance between Class I and Class II
This may be WP:OR and may not be notable, but I was crunching some numbers and the difference between Democratic Senators in Class I and Class II as of January 2007 is 12. This is the largest difference since Hawaii was admitted to the Union.

No difference of Democratic Senators larger than 8 sustained between any 2 classes in the same direction for more than one cycle. Additionally, after a difference greater than 8 occurred between two classes, the next applicable election brought that difference to under 9 each time.

What does this mean for the next 4 years? This means that Chuck Schumer simply has to play defense to maintain the majority and it would be likely that the Democrats will add to their majority, especially if a Republican is elected President in 2008.

I would venture to guess that we should get used to having a Republican President and a Democratic Congress for the next few years. WatchingYouLikeAHawk 21:24, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The reason for the different kinds of classes??
As a non-american, I'm still left clueless as to why the existence of this different length terms exists. Why not everybody have terms of the same length? Could some text be added in, to explain how and why this unusual situation came about? Mathmo Talk — Preceding undated comment added 05:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The senators all serve the same length of term - 6 years. However, they are not all elected at once - a third are elected every two years, so those elected in 2006 will face re-election in 2012, but there will be a senate election in 2008 for those who were elected in 2002 and again in 2010 for those elected in 2004.
 * Senators only had different lengths of term at the very begining or if a new state joins in order to get the pattern started.
 * It IS in the article but the explanation of the odd bits gets much more space than the really simple everyday stuff! Esquimo 17:43, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

State classes?
The bulleted list after "in 1788, each state appointed its two Senators for, respectively" makes no sense, as it implies that the states, rather than the senators were divided into classes. Presumably it should say that some states have Class I and II, some Class I and III, and some Class II and III senators, and the 2-, 4-, and 6-year initial terms should go with the respective classes. KCinDC (talk) 21:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

History Section
It seems to contain an extremely large amount of useless detail (the names of specific senators in each group) which makes it hard to actually understand what is being said. The language is also very odd and seems stiff and old fashioned. There's odd formatting in capitilization of dates for no obvious reason. The first paragraph is just a quote from the constitution, although it's not in quotation marks or particularly clear. Seems in need of work.

As a non-american, this articles does a very bad job of explaining the classes in the senate and why they exist, and I found it very unhelpful. Mrhthepie (talk) 20:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Rules for new states
When a new state is admitted to the Union, its two senators have terms that correspond to those of two different classes [...] determined by a scheme that keeps the three classes as close to the same size as possible. [...] Should a 51st state be admitted to the Union, it would receive senators in Classes I and II, at which point all three Classes would have 34 senators.

So, this is all fine and good, since the two classes with the same number of senators are the two smaller ones. What happens when the two equally-sized classes are the larger ones? Which of the two gets a new senator (the other senator goes into the small class)?

What happens when all three classes are of the same size (as would be the case after a 51st state, for instance)? How are two classes chosen among the three?

Could someone clarify? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ShinyGee (talk • contribs) 02:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * That was exactly the situation in the 1959 Hawaii example discussed in the article. After Alaska's senators were assigned classes, Class I had 32, and the other two had 33. The senators drew lots to see which would be Class I, the class that had to brought up to 33, and who would be Class III. Presumably the Class III was chosen because its next election was farther off than Class II. (The next Class II election was 1960, and the next one for Class III was 1962.) -Rrius (talk) 04:01, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

You might well suppose that, when choosing between classes of equal size, the new seat should be in the class whose next election is farthest in the future. Counterexamples:

(It's not a simple rotation, either.) Now, I went by the date of the relevant Act of Admission, but probably the new senators were classified somewhat later, and the delay could account for a few of these anomalies.

I should explain my entry for North and South Dakota, which were admitted simultaneously. Of the four new senators, one must go to each class, but what of the fourth? Not to Class 2, which was bigger by one. Class 1 had the longest remaining term, but the odd senator went to Class 3. — But Montana and Washington were admitted in the same month, and after these four the classes were equal. Maybe Montana (1,2) happened to get first dibs. —Tamfang (talk) 05:56, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress#Roman numerals for Senate classes
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress. —Markles 01:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC) (Using )
 * Change made per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress.—Markles 17:21, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Could someone-who-knows-how please add a line for "Cook PVI"?
CaptainSleaze (talk) 00:50, 27 September 2017 (UTC). I am a newbie, so please help me. I had to Google "Cook PVI", to understand the meaning of the "Cook PVI" column in the Article page. I believe that forcing me do this is DUMB [STUPID?]. Could some wiki-knowledgeable person or bot please make this term be a link, and/or explain it, in the future? Thank you very much.
 * I made this edit; no objections to anyone tweaking it.
 * I'm not convince the CVI column belongs, though. If retained, the text I just added should have an "as of" qualifier, and a link to a supporting reference. TJRC (talk) 19:53, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I originally had the class breakdown on the Cook PVI page itself, but another editor reverted it and said it belongs here. I dunno.  It certainly belongs somewhere because sorting by PVI and senate class is used by political junkies to predict changes in control of the senate.  For example, all the "blue" senators in "red" states are in Class 1, thus making 2018 a difficult year for the blue team, all else equal ...  I wanted to put a link to the PVI page on the column header itself, but I was too unskilled to tease apart the sorting behavior from the linking behavior.  So I accept the label "Stupid" :-(  --LondonYoung (talk) 16:56, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of current United States Senators which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 11:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Death and resignation
Would be good to cover, or at least mention, how these are dealt with. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:47, 14 September 2019 (UTC).

'Comparison with other United States general elections' bottom row
Given that every listed year has 'varied' as the answer for 'Other state, local, and tribal offices' category, I feel that it useless. Either more description should be added, or the row should be removed entirely.

Very, very bad article
The introduction is far more confusing than enlightening. The three groups are not "staggered". The article doesn't get around to finally saying what the three groups are until way, way, way, way down in the article. This is extremely bad writing.15:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.161.117.162 (talk)
 * Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe needs improvement, please feel free to change it.  We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, since wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse.   TJRC (talk) 16:18, 6 September 2020 (UTC)