State population and candidate quality

Abstract

In this paper, I ask the following question: Is there a relationship between a state's demographic characteristics and the quality of representatives serving that state? In Federalist no. 10, Publius outlines a theory that democracies with a large population will produce better representatives for that democracy. I test this theory by looking at Senate members of the 114th Congress. I will look at four different independent variables relating the state demographics and give a detailed explanation of how to measure quality of senators. These variables are the state's population, education level, median earnings, and median age. I will argue that states that are more populated, aged, educated and wealthy will be more likely to elect more qualified senators.