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“The overall U.S. population stood at 331,449,281, the Census Bureau said on Monday, a 7.4% increase over 2010 representing the second-slowest growth of any decade in history… Texas will receive two more congressional seats next year, and five states - Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, Montana and Oregon - will gain one congressional seat each, the census bureau said. New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will each lose one seat. California, the most populous U.S. state, lost a congressional seat for the first time in its 170-year history. The reapportionment can come down to razor-thin margins. If New York had 89 more people in the census count, for instance, it would have kept its seat at the expense of Minnesota.” Reuters
Both sides see the changes as beneficial for Republicans:
“Going into the 2022 cycle, Republicans will get to draw far more districts than Democrats because they control the process in more states… And reapportionment between states has ramifications for the presidential contests in 2024 and 2028. Texas will now have 40 Electoral College votes and Florida 30, making them second and third behind California. That may force the Democratic ticket in 2024 to give a harder look at playing in Texas, where demographics are shifting the party's way. And it could force Democrats to think twice about competing in Florida because the longtime swing state now has a distinctive GOP lean.”
David Mark, Washington Examiner
“Democrats have spent the last decade trying to climb out of the hole they found themselves in the last redistricting. After the 2010 midterm wave gave the GOP control of state governments, Republicans drew a new round of favorable maps in nearly all the key states. That catapulted them into the majority for eight years, until a massive political realignment spurred by Donald Trump’s election unlocked seats for Democrats that were once out of reach...
“Over the decade, Democrats tried to push their way back into the decision-making rooms — or take the map-drawing out of the partisan realm entirely. They now control governors’ mansions in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Kansas. And new independent redistricting commissions could improve their odds in Michigan and Colorado. But they remain completely boxed out of the process in several key Sun Belt states, including Georgia, Texas, Florida and North Carolina, where demographic change could have been to Democrats’ benefit.”
Ally Mutnick, Politico
Other opinions below.
“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…
“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.”
Dan McLaughlin, National Review
“California will lose a seat for the first time since becoming a state in 1850… The reason is simple: California’s high taxes, heavy regulatory burden, and terrible lawsuit climate have conspired to make the state among the costliest in the nation. People can’t afford to live there. Plus, as the epicenter of cancel culture, many non-woke Californians are growing weary of self-censoring, elsewise damaging their careers…
“What U-Haul charges to rent a truck to move to another state is one real-time indication of the imbalance of people migrating. Because an empty truck doesn’t drive itself back to California, the DIY moving company must pay people to reposition its fleet. As a result, renting a 26-foot truck from Austin to Silicon Valley will set you back $1,084 – but moving from the once-Golden State to the Lone Star State will cost the new Texan $5,896, more than five times as much—the highest that ratio has been in at least a decade.”
Chuck DeVore, Fox News
“Did Cuomo’s horrible mismanagement of New York’s initial outbreak last spring cost his state an electoral vote and a House seat? Realistically there’s no way that it didn’t, is there? New York’s lost more than 50,000 people to COVID and was seeing around 800 deaths per day last spring at its peak. Minnesota’s seen a little more than 7,000 deaths all told since last March…
“There’s a related factor. The ferocious first wave of COVID may have scared enough New Yorkers into moving to states like Florida and Texas that the net population loss cost them. The census count is based on where someone resided on April 1, 2020, which was when New York was in the thick of its outbreak. When the margin’s as thin as 89 people, virtually any deterrent to remaining in the state is potentially decisive. And that first wave in New York was a strong deterrent.”
Allahpundit, Hot Air
“While the Supreme Court has outlawed the drawing of congressional lines around racial data, they have given the green light to draw lines for political reasons. That means Republicans in Texas, for instance, will cram as many Democrats as possible into as few districts as possible, both at the state and federal level… Democrats will do the same thing in states they control. But Republicans, objectively, have been more successful at gerrymandering…
“The political drawing of congressional districts is a key reason [Republicans] retained control of the House in 2012. It's a large reason they retained control of many state legislatures in 2020… Democrats in the House have endorsed a plan to create independent commissions in every state. But it does not currently have the supermajority needed to cut off debate in the Senate.”
Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
Others argue that “Just because most of the states that are gaining seats are red and most of the states that are losing them are blue does not necessarily mean that reapportionment will help Republicans — in the House, at least. That’s because many of the fastest-growing areas of red states are increasingly Democratic, so it matters a lot how the new districts will be drawn.”
Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich, FiveThirtyEight
“While Texas remains a state that favors Republicans (former President Donald Trump carried it twice and Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz were both reelected in the past four years in hugely expensive races), Democrats have clearly made inroads over the past decade. (Trump won the state by just 5.5 points in 2020, compared with George W. Bush, who won Texas by 23 points in 2004, or Mitt Romney, who won it by almost 16 points in 2012.)…
“The increasing competitiveness of the state when coupled with its ever-increasing swat within Congress makes Texas the single most important state, politically speaking, over the next decade.”
Chris Cillizza, CNN
“Arizona was widely expected to gain one House seat, but somehow population growth stagnated or too many people didn’t fill out the Census form…It’s not that difficult to figure out what happened here. Former President Donald Trump clearly succeeded in politicizing the decennial Census…
“Trump scared the heck out of those living here illegally by trying to add a citizenship status question. Add to that other factors like lack of internet in rural communities and the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and my guess is you end up with an undercount…
“But the Census, which is conducted every 10 years, isn’t just a headcount. The government gathers tons of data, such as people’s income, home values and health insurance coverage. That wealth of information is then used to draw congressional political districts and to distribute an enormous amount of federal money for all sorts of programs and services. This isn’t just a political setback.”
Elvia Díaz, Arizona Republic
