Two things about the midterm elections: It’s bizarre that a state with the population of Rhode Island has as many national senators as California. More representative of state demarcations than the people. Also: Many Americans still vote against their best interests, guided by their ideology rather than their reality. From Margot Sanger-Katz in the New York Times:

“In places where the uninsured rate plummeted this year, Republicans still scored big electoral victories.

Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia — states that saw substantial drops in the proportion of their residents without insurance — all elected Republican Senate candidates who oppose the Affordable Care Act. Control of the West Virginia state House of Delegates flipped from Democrats to Republicans. And Arkansas elected Republican supermajorities to both houses of its legislature along with a Republican governor, a situation that could imperil the Medicaid expansion that helped more than 200,000 of its poorest residents get health insurance.”