Matt Yglesias

Celebrating 120 Years of North Dakota

States of America. Given that more people live in Memphis, TN than North Dakota it might seem unfair that this large and essentially empty patch of land gets two senators. When you consider that even mighty South Dakota has fewer people than Jacksonville, Florida and that the two states combined contain considerably fewer people than live in Queens or the Virginia Beach / Norfolk / Newport News metro area then it starts to seem even stranger that there are actually two Dakotas. Why would you do it that way?

The answer, it turns out, is cynical partisan politics. The Dakota Territory was extremely favorable to the Republican Party, so the GOP made it into two states.