Texas will gain 2 congressional seats. Seven states to lose 1 seat, Census Bureau data shows
2020 Census, the Census Bureau said Monday in the release of its first round of data from the survey taken last year.
In total, seven seats shifted affecting 13 states. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gained one seat in addition to Texas. California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia each lost one seat.
The shift could affect the 2022 midterm elections and whether Democrats can hold onto control of the House, where they hold a narrow majority. It’s also part of a broader shift to the South and West of the U.S., with 84 seats shifting toward those states since 1940.
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New congressional districts would take effect for the 2022 election. That puts added pressure on Democrats, who control the house by the slim margin of 218-212, with five seats vacant. The size of the House has not changed since 1913.
States that gained seats were mostly Republican-leaning, with Texas, Florida, Montana and North Carolina each voting for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. North Carolina was one of the closer races, with Trump defeating President Joe Biden by less than 1.5%. Oregon and Colorado, meanwhile, were solidly blue states in the last election.
States that lost seats were mostly Democratic, but consist of more close battleground states. California, Illinois and New York were solidly in Biden’s column; Michigan and Pennsylvania were closer swing states with slim margins for the president. Trump prevailed in Ohio and West Virginia.
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“Today’s data release is the first step in the redistricting process and it will give states the number of congressional districts they will have for the rest of the decade,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program.
gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing district lines to favor one party over the other or to suppress the vote of communities of color. In some states, the process is fairer than others, he said, because they are not controlled by just one political party or they have instituted an independent redistricting committee, such as in Michigan. But for other states, the party in power stands to control the map.
“Because in some of the states… like Texas, Florida and North Carolina, redistricting is controlled by one party, it gives them a huge advantage because they can aggressively draw the map however they want,” Li said. “Aggressive gerrymandering could give Republicans a House majority in 2022.”
For the People Act, Li said. The bill was passed by the House in March along partisan lines and would mandate independent redistricting in addition to other measures intended to protect voters’ rights. One Democrat voted with all Republicans to oppose the bill, and it could face a filibuster from Republicans in the equally divided Senate.
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The release of the apportionment numbers Monday afternoon comes almost four months later than planned because of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and anomalies discovered in the data as the numbers were being crunched.
COVID-19 delayed delivery of Census questionnaires for hard-to-reach populations during the 2020 spring quarantine and delayed operations since then to reach households that failed to respond.
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The U.S. population has increased by 7.4% since the last Census, to a total of 331,449,281 people. That’s a slower growth rate than recorded in 2010 and the second slowest growth rate in Census history. California is the most populous state with 39,538,223 people, while Wyoming is the smallest state at 576,851 people. Utah was the state with the fastest growing population over the last decade, increasing by 18.4%, while West Virginia had the most population loss, dipping 3.2%.
Contributing: Associated Press