How many elected offices does the United States contain?
No exact count exists.
How many elected officials does the United States have?
For federal and state electeds, an exact count is easy to find.
For local electeds, no exact count exists. No federal body or research association counts the number & type of local elected officials. That’s absurd. Federal, state, and local governments are so poorly integrated – in a goddamn “superpower” – that we don’t even know exactly how many electeds the local governments have!
If you want to estimate the performance of third parties, this answer matters. Very few third party candidates win seats to state government, and none to federal office. As a result, ignoring local elections will ignore 99.9% of third party activity.
This blogpost will outline the number of elected officials at each level, reformatted in a way useful for evaluating third party electoral performance.
How many governments does the United States contain?
It is often useful to step back and think about one’s country as if it were a foreign land. If you had to describe the structure of US governance top to bottom to someone with no knowledge of the US, how would you do so?
The United States is a federal democracy that contains three levels of government. Laws in higher levels usually override laws in lower levels:
1 central government
56 state & territory governments
50 state governments
5 territory governments
1 federal district
38978* local governments
3043* county governments
35935* municipal governments**
* Count as of 1992 January.
** City & town governments are usually geographically contained within a county government, but county governments rarely have the power to meaningfully override municipal governments.
In short: The US contains about 40,000 governments, 99.9% of which are local governments.
How many elected seats does the US central government contain?
The US central government contains 536 people with law-writing power or law-executing power:
1 executive (“President”), elected through a weakly-democratic “Electoral College” that privileges small state residents
535 legislators
100 legislators in the upper chamber (“Senate”), since the 1959 addition of Alaska and Hawaii
435 legislators in the lower chamber (“House”), since the Reapportionment Act of 1929
In addition, the US central government contains 9 non-voting delegates from US colonies:
9 non-voting delegates
5 non-voting delegates from territories: Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and Virgin Islands, who represent 3.5 million disenfranchised citizens
1 non-voting delegate from the District of Columbia, who represents 0.7 million disenfranchised citizens
3 potential non-voting delegates from Native American tribes
Cherokee have treaty rights to 1 delegate, and 3 recognized tribes; currently, two tribes have appointed their own delegate (though this position was appointed, not elected, and legally it is likely that just 1 delegate should exist)
Choctaw have treaty rights to 1 delegate, and 3 recognized tribes; currently, no tribe has appointed a delegate
Lenape have (arguable) treaty rights to 1 delegate, and 3 recognized tribes; currently, no tribe has appointed a delegate
In short: The US central government has 1 executive, 535 legislators, and 9-15 non-voting delegates.
How many elected seats do state governments contain?
The US contains just one central government, which is easy to enumerate. The US contains 56 regional governments (“states” or “territories”), which make it difficult for a single person to enumerate their elected seats.
Fortunately, the National Conference of State Legislatures provides a regularly updated count of the voting members of regional governments (and their partisanship).
US regional governments contain 7631 people with law-writing power or law-executing power, as of the 2023-11-28 update:
56 executives
50 state executives (“Governor”, etc.)
5 territorial executives (“Governor”, etc.)
1 federal district executive (“Mayor”)
7575 legislators
7386 state legislators
1924 upper chamber legislators (“Senate”, etc.)
5413 lower chamber legislators (“House”, etc.)
49 unicameral legislators (“Senate”, etc.)
189 territorial legislators
54 upper chamber legislators (“Senate”, etc.)
92 lower chamber legislators (“House”, etc.)
43 unicameral legislators (“Senate”, etc.)
In addition, US regional governments contain 3 non-voting delegates:
3 delegates
3 state delegates
3 lower chamber delegates: Maine’s 3 non-voting delegates from Native American tribes: the Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Penobscot
In short: US regional governments have 56 executives, 7575 legislators, and 3 non-voting delegates.
How many elected seats do local governments contain?
The US contains about 40,000 local governments, which makes it effectively impossible for a single person to enumerate their elected seats.
No organization maintains a currently-updated database of the elected officials in local governments. Some scholars have compiled estimates of local governments in cities above a certain size. Examples:
de Benedictis-Kessner et al 2023’s “local government elections database” covers municipalities & counties above 50,000 people
the Center for American Women and Politics’ “Women in Municipal Office” covers cities & towns above 10,000 people.
However, neither attempts to cover the full universe of US local governments. This was not always the case.
Since 1957, the US government has conducted a “Census of Governments” (COG) every 5 years on the number, structure, and function of US state & local governments. (The COG began in 1902, but did not include any useful details for this purpose until 1957.)
In 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987, and 1992, the COG asked US state & local governments to detail the number & type of “popularly elected officials” in their government.
Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, the Census has not asked state & local governments about this topic since 1992, which was 32 years ago. I cannot find any documentation which explains why.
The list below summarizes the results of the 1992 COG, Tables 7-12:
County governments
Governments: 3,043
Council-elected executive system: 371 (YES elected mayor)
Council-administration system: 845 (NO elected mayor)
Council-commission system: 1,827 (NO elected mayor)
Electeds: 58,818
Members of governing boards: 17,274
From government count: 371 elected executives
Others: 41,173
Municipal governments
Governments: 19279
Council-mayor system: 15,176 (YES elected mayor)
Council-manager system: 3,147 (NO elected mayor)
Commission system: 351 (NO elected mayor)
Selectmen: 587 (NO elected mayor)
Electeds: 135,531
Members of governing boards: 107,542
From government count: 15,176 elected executives
Others: 12,813
Town governments
Governments: 16,656
Council-mayor system: 602 (YES elected mayor)
Council-manager system: 583 (NO elected mayor)
Commission system: 433 (NO elected mayor)
Selectmen: 14136 (NO elected mayor)
Electeds: 126,958
Members of governing boards: 51,770
From government count: 602 elected executives
Others: 74,586
NOTE: This excludes “town meeting” and similar arrangements
Others
School legislatures: 94,633
School districts: 88,434
Dependent school systems: 6,199 (included in “other” above)
Special district officials: 84,089
In total:
Local county, municipal, and town legislatures: 17,274 + 107,542 + 51,770 = 176,586
Local county, municipal, and town elected executives: 371 + 15,176 + 602 = 16,149
Local county, municipal, and town other positions, by addition: 41,173 + 12,813 + 74,586 + 88,434 + 88,434 = 305440
In short:
about 177,000 local legislators
about 16,000 local executives
about 305,000 other electeds
The Census of Governments (COG) is one of the strongest sources on this topic, because it aims to capture the entire universe of local government and because local governments are (nominally) legally required to answer this survey.
In practice, about 0.2% of county, 10% of municipal, and 17% of town governments failed to respond; the Census imputed their results from state or local law where possible.
In addition, some of the local governments which reported a council-executive structure did not actually have an elected mayor:
Municipal governments: The 1992 COG, Table 9, gives 15,176 “council-mayor” governments. However, the introduction reports “11,388 directly elected mayors”. Using the same data, Berry and Gerson 2009 report 11,380 municipal mayors. That’s about 75.0% of the COG total.
Town governments: The 1992 COG, Table 10, gives 602 town “council-mayor” governments. Berry and Gerson 2009 report 119 town mayors. That’s about 19.8% of the COG total.
County governments: The 1992 COG, Table 7, gives 371 county council-executive governments. Berry and Gerson 2009 report 324 town mayors. That’s about 87.3% of the COG total.
It’s not clear what causes this discrepancy. Some of the discrepancy can be explained by nonresponse, but not all. It’s possible that some of the mayors in these governments are appointed by the local legislature (and should truly be marked “council-manager”). It’s also possible that the granular, jurisdiction-specific data used by Berry and Gerson was more affected by nonresponse than the aggregated, imputation-using COG headline data.
I will arbitrarily stick with the COG headline data. However, these results should NOT be reported with precision, as they have almost certainly changed since 1992, and because the data quality is imperfect.
Lastly: The data above only includes the 50 states and the District of Columbia. None of the territories are included.
In short: US local governments in the 50 states & DC have ~16,000 executives, ~177,000 legislators, and an unknown number of non-voting delegates. Territorial local government numbers are unknown.
Summary and importance
In summary, the US government contains about 201,000 elected seats with law-writing or law-executing power:
Federal
1 executive
535 legislators
100 upper legislators
435 lower legislators
Regional
56 executives
50 state executives
6 territory & federal district executives
7,575 legislators
7,386 state legislators
1,973 upper & unicameral legislators
5,413 lower legislators
189 territorial legislators
97 upper & unicameral legislators
92 lower legislators
Local
about 201,000 electeds in the 50 states & DC
about 16,000 executives
about 400 county executives
about 15,000 municipal executives
about 600 town executives
about 177,000 legislators
about 17,000 county legislators
about 108,000 municipal legislators
about 52,000 town legislators
Why does it matter? Take the question: “What percent of local seats do third party and independent electeds hold?” We cannot answer this question without a numerator (number of seats held, which is often difficult to find) a denominator (which this page describes). For that purpose, here are the useful denominators:
1 President
100 Senators
435 Representatives
50 Governors
1973 State Senators
5413 State Representatives
16000 Mayors & County Executives
177000 City Council & County Board Members
Conclusion and shilling
In short: I like having denominators.
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