Large states favored representation in Congress based on population because they believed that states with more people should have more political power and a stronger voice in making national laws.

Core reason

  • Large states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts had far more people than small states such as Delaware or New Jersey, so they argued that equal votes per state would unfairly dilute the political influence of their citizens.
  • They felt that if each state had the same number of votes, a small state with far fewer people would have the same power as a large state, which they saw as violating the idea that government should represent people , not just states.

Political and economic power

  • More people meant more taxpayers and more soldiers, so large states believed their greater contributions to the new nation justified greater representation in Congress.
  • Leaders from these states argued that population-based representation would align power with where most of the nation’s resources, economic activity, and manpower actually were.

Tension with small states

  • Small states feared that population-based representation would allow a few big states to dominate Congress and “rule the rest of the country together,” so they pushed hard for equal representation instead.
  • This clash between large-state and small-state interests is what led to the Great (Connecticut) Compromise: a House of Representatives based on population and a Senate with equal representation for each state.

TL;DR: Large states favored representation based on population because they had more people, paid more, and contributed more, so they wanted political power in Congress to match their population and influence.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.