Winners and losers from the Census Bureau’s big announcement.
The Census Bureau this afternoon released the state-by-state population figures from the 2020 census that will be used to determine the new number of seats in the House of Representatives, and with it, the Electoral College. Let’s look at some winners and losers.
Winner: American democracy. There were real fears that the Census numbers would come in too late to be practically applied to draw new district lines in the House, which could have set off all manner of trouble. Fortunately, while the time frame is a bit more compressed than usual, there should be ample time for states to draw new maps:
Winner: Republican presidential candidates. States won by Donald Trump in 2020 gained five electoral votes, and lost two, for a net gain of three. States won by Joe Biden in 2020 were the opposite — five losses, two gains. Moreover, the shift from the trio of midwestern states that made Trump and Biden president (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio) to Texas and Florida is probably good news specifically for a candidate such as Ron DeSantis who can build a home base in those states.
Modest winners: Minnesota, Alabama, and Rhode Island were all projected to lose seats, but did not. Minnesota was the last to make the cut. By contrast, Arizona failed to gain a seat, and earlier projections of a three-seat gain for Texas and two-seat gain for Florida did not materialize. On balance, this is less good news for Republicans than the projections.
Losers: New York, California, and Illinois. New York lost a seat by a margin of 89 votes. But New York’s loss was modest; Illinois actually lost net population over the decade. (So did West Virginia.) California lost a House seat for the first time since entering the Union in 1850, a turn away from its long history of apparently unstoppable growth.
Winner: House Republicans. The states gaining House seats currently have a total of 52 Republican and 37 Democratic seats (counting open seats by the party that held them in November’s election). The states losing House seats currently have a total of 55 Republican and 94 Democratic seats. While some states such as New York may draw new maps that shift those losses to Republicans, the fact remains that states with a lot of House Republicans already are getting more seats at the table, and states with big Democratic caucuses are getting fewer of them.
Split decision: Gerrymanders. New maps will need to be drawn by Republican-controlled governments in Texas, Florida, Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia; by Democrat-controlled governments in California, New York, Illinois, Colorado, and Oregon, and by divided governments in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. (Some of these states, such as California, have restrictions on the drawing of districts by elected governments.)
All told, the impact of the new map is probably less dramatic than we had been led by recent projections to believe. Still, the overall trend is away from the Midwest and Northeast and toward the Sun Belt — and for the first time in its history, California is not reaping the benefits of that trend.