Its a counter-narrative fact because conservatives tend to dismiss the idea that they have an unfair advantage and the fact that Republicans gerrymander far more.

This is according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight. The GOP has an advantage in every branch, from the EC, the Senate, the house, and even the courts:

By now, Democrats’ disadvantage in the Electoral College is well-documented. President Joe Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 percentage points, yet he won Wisconsin — the state that gave him his decisive 270th electoral vote1 — by only 0.6 points. In other words, Biden needed to beat former President Donald Trump nationally by more than 3.8 points2 in order to win the White House outright. (However, Trump wouldn’t have won outright unless Biden had won the popular vote by fewer than 3.2 points, thus losing Pennsylvania as well.3 The Electoral College’s Republican bias in 2020 thus averaged out to 3.5 points — but either way, it’s the most out of sync the Electoral College has been with the popular vote since 1948.) That said, of course, it is Republicans who have now won the presidency twice in the last six presidential elections while losing the popular vote. Political scientists say this occurrence risks “significantly decreas[ing] the perceived legitimacy of the winning candidates.”

Last year, despite Biden winning the national popular vote by 4.5 points, Trump won the median Senate seat4 by 0.5 points. That 5.0-point Republican lean makes the Senate the most biased institution in the federal government. In fact, Republican senators have not represented a majority of the population since 1999 — yet, from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2015 to 2021,5 Republicans had a majority of members of the Senate itself. That means that, for 10 years, Republican senators were passing bills — and not passing others — on behalf of a minority of Americans. 

Even the house tilts Republican, partly as a result of gerrymandering (which is easier for GOP as a result of geography):

The House of Representatives completes the federal trifecta of imbalance: According to Daily Kos Elections, Biden won the median House seat (Illinois’s 14th District) by 2.4 percentage points, meaning it was still 2.1 points redder than the country as a whole.

This is not a new phenomenon: The House map has had a Republican bias since at least 1968, based on presidential election results. And in 1996 and 2012, Republicans even won House majorities despite Democrats winning the House popular vote.

Unlike the Electoral College and Senate, the founders actually did intend for the House to represent the majority of people — yet the chamber now shares the others’ Republican bias. One reason for this is, again, urban-rural sorting; the clustering of Democratic votes in urban areas has made it harder to draw maps that benefit Democrats rather than Republicans. But another reason is engineered by Republicans themselves. The GOP has taken full advantage of its many opportunities to draw boundaries that give them an unfair advantage. For instance, after the red wave election of 2010, Republicans drew more than five times as many congressional districts as Democrats, and they used it to push their structural advantage in the House to record levels.

The House’s Republican bias in the 2020 election, however, wasn’t as severe as earlier in the decade, as some Republican-drawn maps were invalidated by courts and shifts in electoral coalitions also caused some gerrymanders to backfire (e.g., suburban seats that had been assumed to be safely Republican in 2011 have become more Democratic). That said, Republicans had a strong down-ballot performance in the 2020 elections, so they will once again get to redraw a plurality of congressional districts as they see fit, which could again pad the House’s Republican bias. 

Republicans also use this power to gerrymander at the state level (its easier for Republicans as a result of geography), leading to them having much larger majorities than normal, and majorities where they shouldn't even have one in state legislatures:

State legislatures are the last piece in the institutional jenga. Here, too, urban-rural sorting and gerrymandering have handed Republicans an advantage: Republicans currently control at least four state-legislative chambers (the Michigan Senate, Michigan House, Minnesota Senate and Pennsylvania Senate) for which Democrats won the statewide popular vote in the last election.6

Democrats also won the 2018 popular vote in the Michigan House, North Carolina House and Pennsylvania House yet failed to take control of those chambers. In fact, Republicans have controlled the Michigan House without interruption since the 2012 elections despite winning the popular vote in just one of the five elections to take place in that time, according to Daily Kos Elections.

In most states, legislatures draw the districts in which both state lawmakers and U.S. representatives are elected. This raises the possibility that minority rule can self-perpetuate: A minority-elected legislature can theoretically set up future legislatures and congressional delegations to be elected with a minority too. 

Which has policy implications as well:

This is important not only because state governments enact the types of policies that are most consequential for people’s lives, but also because they can reinforce minority rule.

In most states, legislatures draw the districts in which both state lawmakers and U.S. representatives are elected. This raises the possibility that minority rule can self-perpetuate: A minority-elected legislature can theoretically set up future legislatures and congressional delegations to be elected with a minority too. 

Along with the senate:

This has implications for policy as well as democracy. “You have a Senate that empowers small states,” Jake Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington, said. “Plus [with] the filibuster, you have to get compromises to get to 60 votes.” For example, Grumbach pointed out, fossil-fuel-producing states such as Kentucky, Louisiana and West Virginia don’t have very many people, yet their six senators are capable of blocking legislation to address climate change even though most Americans say the federal government is not doing enough on the issue.  

They also use their disproportionate power in state governments to change election law in a way that benefits them:

Additionally, legislatures are the ones with the power to change election law since elections are administered at the state and local levels. That means, as we’re seeing now in states like Georgia and Iowa, that they can make the competition less fair by changing the rules of the game.

Republicans then also appoint Judges who defend this gerrymandering and subversion of democracy:

From 2017 to 2021, more than 220 judges, including three Supreme Court justices, were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate that a majority of voters didn’t choose. 

These judges are the umpires who uphold the rules of our tennis game, but when a system of minority rule brought them to power, those decisions may not be impartial. Rather, their rulings on cases involving redistricting and voting rights can deepen the minority’s institutional advantages. Indeed, under Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has done just that with rulings such as Shelby County v. Holder, which weakened the Voting Rights Act, and Rucho v. Common Cause, which said federal courts should not review partisan gerrymanders. And because federal judgeships are lifetime appointments, these judges will shape our democracy not just in the short term, but for decades to come.

Republicans are also much more likely to subvert democracy when they lose an election. In fact, one of the biggest determinants of how undemocratic states are is whether the GOP is in power:

The false election-fraud allegations surrounding the 2020 election showed that legitimacy may be difficult to regain, especially when Republicans continue to push the lie that the election was stolen: Only 27 percent of Republican respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted almost five months after the election said that the 2020 election was “legitimate and accurate.”

Republicans, in particular, have been more willing than Democrats to violate norms — and even subvert democracy — in order to retain power. Indeed, recent research from Grumbach on state-level democratic backsliding has found that the most important predictor of how undemocratic state-level institutions are is whether the GOP is in power.

“When [Republicans] take unified governance, where they control both legislative chambers and a governorship, they have tremendous leeway to change election administration and districting,” Grumbach told us. “And those have effects [that] reverberate throughout the political system.”
Republican state legislatures have repeatedly attempted to undermine the results of popular elections that didn’t go their way. Most infamously, after the 2020 election, Republicans responded to Biden’s win by introducing bills to allow a state legislature to annul the certification of elections and even to declare the 2020 election in one state null and void and appoint their own electors. 

But these attacks on majority rule started long before 2020. After the elections of Democratic governors and other state officers in North Carolina (in 2016), Wisconsin and Michigan (in 2018), Republican legislators scrambled to strip certain powers, such as political appointments, from those posts before the Democrats took office. And Republican-controlled legislatures in Florida, South Dakota and Utah have repealed or defanged liberal laws passed via ballot measure since 2016, while at least seven states7 have proposed laws this year that would make it harder to pass ballot measures in the future. Some of them would outright enshrine minority rule into law — for example, by raising the threshold for passing ballot measures from 50 percent to 60 percent.

As a result, America isn't very democratic at all. In fact, America is ranked 25 on the global democracy index, far behind every other developed nation. It is a flawed democracy.