Texas is the big winner in this decade’s reapportionment process, as it will gain two congressional seats from the results of the 2020 census.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1371391
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1371391
Glad it was not worse…and people are now waking up to an accurate appraisal of what the GOP is doing…and the importance of voting.
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California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia each lost a seat.
Please let redistricting result in Qevin McCarthy, Devin “no-cow” Nunes, and Darrell Issa fighting over their two remaining districts.
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Texas had been expected to pick up three seats. I guess you can keep that one, New York,
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The states that will gain one congressional seat each are Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon.
And Texas gets two. Anyone have an estimate of what +/- difference the reassignment of seats is going to make to the 2022 margin for control of the House?
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It’s not only important to understand which states gain or lose a seat, but also the relative increases (or decreases) in different areas in states. Since we’ve been working with 2010 census numbers all decade, there’s been a lot of population increase in BLUE areas (cities, suburbs) and no so much in RED areas (rural, small towns). That going to make gerrymandering much harder for Rs because they no longer have the suburbs for packing and cracking effectively against the cities. Now they are the owns with their supporters clustered – so to speak – geographically at least as much and D constitutencies used to be in the cities.
It seems strange to think about it that way, but if a bunch of small population / large area rural counties with 75%+ R supporters are clustered, from where will they dilute it with just the right number of D supporters to render it a R safe district without overkill? Answer: They can’t. They needed the suburbs and now Ds are getting about 60% of suburban voters and there are now more of them.
This time around, I actually think Rs won’t be able to gerrymander effectively. They tried that and got crushed in 2018 when their 60/40 gerrymanders turned against them. Texas is a good example. With the new census, it will be large D cities that are going to earn more representation, packing or no packing.
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Hard to say with any assurance, since it depends on where inside each state the population has been growing or declining, not to mention how aggressive the gerrymandering is going to be. If you just look at the statewide partisan leans, you’ve got only two blue states gaining seats, whereas five blue states are losing seats.
But of course, it’s not that simple. California, for instance, seems likely to keep the same number of Dem seats while losing one of its R seats, just because the population growth is greater in the big metro areas than in more rural places where R’s run strong. Likewise, the Texas lege might have a hard time making both of those new seats favor R’s when the vast majority of our growth is in the big urban and suburban counties.
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We know that the current court will look kindly on pretty much any shapes the computer programs come up with, so it’s more about voter analysis and risks.
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Steve Kornacki reported that NY would have kept that seat with only 89 more people.
I don’t know the margin for CA, but cannot help wondering how many immigrant responses were depressed by all the ICE activity & subsequent fear.
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Time to expand the fucking House. Seriously? 89 people, well within any margin of error, and that’s the difference between keeping a seat and losing it?
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Long past time! The Senate is a disaster, but at least the House should be based on equivalent representation.
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I imagine we’ll see some AOC level blue seats in TX to capture every dem voter possible and then suburbs will be diluted with districts so expansive that the DOT would question a trucker’s mileage log if they were to drive end to end without stopping.
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“The states that will gain one congressional seat each are Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon.”
And DC will gain 2 hehe…
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A potentially interesting point. If the House stays the same size, then all of those numbers would need to be recalculated.
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“Texas is the big winner in this decade’s reapportionment process, as it will gain two congressional seats from the results of the 2020 census.”
A result no doubt of massive minority population growth again, but which will magically somehow result in TX sending 2 more white Christian nationalist conservative men to Congress.
Maybe? I suspect a new apportionment wouldn’t be until the next Census, but who knows. Congress could order one I think, maybe, no sure, but the Constitution just requires it every 10 years…it doesn’t prohibit us from doing it more often…but maybe other statutes are in play and I’m not expert in that area.
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California has been universally projected to lose a seat this cycle, before Trump started putting his greasy thumb on the census scale. Its population growth has simply lagged behind that of Texas, Florida, Colorado, etc.
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A net loss of 3 reliably blue Electoral College votes.
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Can they let the House run with 437 members until the next reapportionment? It’s not like the house doesn’t frequently function with fewer than 435.
They can run it with a thousand if they like. That’s only set in Statute, can change it any time. And should.
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Montana could be interesting. Western Montana, specifically Missoula, leans pretty liberal and is the second biggest metro area. If the state is split roughly in half, I can see the western portion leaning blue, or at least being competitive on an a bi-annual basis. I’m not sure how the state could be gerrymandered to result in two reliably red districts.
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