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New census numbers shift political power south to Republican strongholds

Political power in the United States will continue to shift south this decade, as historically Democratic states that border the Great Lakes give up congressional seats and electoral votes to regions where Republicans currently enjoy a political advantage, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Texas, Florida and North Carolina, three states that voted twice for President Donald Trump, are set to gain a combined four additional seats in Congress in 2023 because of population growth, granting them collectively as many new votes in the electoral college for the next presidential election as the Democratic-leaning Hawaii has in total. At the same time, four northern states with Democratic governors that President Biden won in 2020 — Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York — will each lose a single congressional seat. Ohio, a nearby Republican-leaning state, will also lose a seat in Congress. The data released Monday marked the start to a constitutionally mandated effort to redraw congressional districts across the country in advance of the 2022 elections, a tangled and litigious process that is likely to benefit Republican officeholders more than Democratic ones next year. That stands as a stark threat to Democratic control of the House, which will rest on a seven-vote margin, with four outstanding vacancies, once newly elected Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) takes office in the coming weeks..

The numbers are also the first to emerge from one of the most challenging population counts in the nation’s history, one disrupted by a global pandemic. Trump, during his term, also pushed to add a citizenship question and exclude undocumented immigrants from the census. The results show that the country grew over the past decade by the second-slowest rate in history, owing to an aging population, decreased fertility and slowing immigration. A slightly lower rate of growth was recorded between 1930 and 1940, a decade that encompassed the Great Depression. Only seven of the constitutionally mandated 435 congressional seats will be reapportioned under the latest population count. Five of the seven states that lost a House seat voted for Biden, and five of the seven newly created seats will be added to states that voted for Trump. The full partisan effect of the shifts will not be known for months, as states must sift through population data that will be released later this year to draw new congressional district lines, resulting in hundreds of decisions by state lawmakers and independent commissions about the partisan makeup of each individual district.

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by Anonymousreply 32March 28, 2022 12:06 PM

It could have been worse. Texas was predicted to gain 3 seats, it only gained two.

And man New York got screwed. If 89(!!!) more people responded to the census it wouldn't have lost a seat.

by Anonymousreply 1April 26, 2021 8:58 PM

At what point does one give up on life itself and decide to move to Texas?

by Anonymousreply 2April 26, 2021 9:01 PM

Thanks to Trump shortening the time for the Census Bureau to finish its work. Also, thanks to those people who didn't fill out their census forms and ignored all the attempts from visiting census workers.

by Anonymousreply 3April 26, 2021 9:04 PM

The shift in population to southern, Republican-leaning states may not mean what Republicans hope it means. It could be that more liberal minded people are moving to those states because of increased job opportunities brought on by growth in technology, which could actually make those districts more blue.

by Anonymousreply 4April 26, 2021 9:22 PM

Trump tax reform has only accelerated the move South

by Anonymousreply 5April 26, 2021 9:41 PM

California is losing a seat even thought it’s population keeps growing. The House of Representatives needs to be updated.

by Anonymousreply 6April 26, 2021 9:43 PM

Honestly? It may have helped that Hispanics were afraid to fill out the census. Florida was expected to gain at least two seats and Texas was expected to gain at least 3. That probably has to do with Hispanics being way undercounted.

The lost NY seat will likely be a GOP seat so I’m not worried about that.

by Anonymousreply 7April 26, 2021 9:45 PM

Its*

by Anonymousreply 8April 26, 2021 9:46 PM

TX and NC are both trending blue. Only FL is trending red.

by Anonymousreply 9April 26, 2021 9:46 PM

TX is trending slowly Blue

by Anonymousreply 10April 26, 2021 9:53 PM

Texas is trending blue but repugs are still in charge there.

by Anonymousreply 11April 27, 2021 12:38 AM

NYC has become a cesspool of socialism and public benefits. Thank you Mayor Deblasio and your "woke" policies. It will very soon collapse under its own weight of public benefit obligations. Educated middle class people cannot get out fast enough, leaving only the people who have no desire to work or others with no qualifications who cannot do much else besides menial labor. Not a good recipe for financial health.

by Anonymousreply 12April 27, 2021 1:07 AM

All the gerrymandering, court stacking, and census manipulation will eventually bite the Republicans on their ass.

by Anonymousreply 13April 27, 2021 3:41 AM

This Census was one of the least accurate in history.

Trump did all he could to dissuade immigrants from filling it out. First he tried to include the citizen question on the Census. Once the courts blocked that, he moved the deadline up.

The northern states didn't have enough time to get deep into immigrant communities to convince them to fill it out.

This Census was fixed specifically to give power to Southern Republican states.

by Anonymousreply 14April 27, 2021 4:20 AM

[quote]NYC has become a cesspool of socialism and public benefits. Thank you Mayor Deblasio and your "woke" policies. It will very soon collapse under its own weight of public benefit obligations.

And all those liberals are moving down to Texas, Florida, and NC...

by Anonymousreply 15April 27, 2021 4:22 AM

Apple just announced a billion dollar 3000 employee center is going to be built in Raleigh. Tech workers tend to be better educated and thus more liberal, so that’s good for NC.

by Anonymousreply 16April 27, 2021 4:27 AM

Repubs are gonna make previous gerrymandering look tame

by Anonymousreply 17April 27, 2021 12:12 PM

Aside from Texas, Florida and North Carolina, the gains were in western states. All California, Illinois and New York lost was one Republican Congressman from each state.

by Anonymousreply 18April 27, 2021 2:03 PM

[quote]Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York

All 4 of these states send Republicans to congress. It isn't a lock that this is bad for Democrats. Michigan and Pennsylvania especially.

by Anonymousreply 19April 27, 2021 2:09 PM

Republican legislature are about to engage in the most vulgar gerrymandering imaginable

by Anonymousreply 20April 27, 2021 2:22 PM

[QUOTE]Republican legislature are about to engage in the most vulgar gerrymandering imaginable

I think you're right. I see no way forward for this country. None. Republicans are emboldened and have too much power nationally through the Senate and at the state level, which sets the stage in the House. Despite the will of the majority of the people in the US we're ruled by a right wing minority who don't believe in democracy and will deny people the right to vote to retain their power. Biden is a brief respite. We're going to inevitably ride the facism train to the end of the line, wherever that is. It won't be pretty.

by Anonymousreply 21April 27, 2021 4:01 PM

AOC and the squad are in trouble. The far left "woke" crowd even more so.

by Anonymousreply 22April 27, 2021 4:55 PM

R21 uh huh. A right wing minority runs the country. That’s why we have:

A border wall Roe overturned Obergefell overturned

Oh wait we have none of that.

by Anonymousreply 23April 27, 2021 5:00 PM

Building permits for housing units jumped 6% in 2020 & are up 40% since 2014. States like Idaho, Utah, Texas & Florida are seeing population growth but even more rapid housing growth, while California, New York, and Illinois have seen new housing decline relative to population.

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by Anonymousreply 24May 3, 2021 11:48 PM

This article and the longer one linked inside it made me feel a bit better about the electoral gains of the R's:

More on the Census:

We wrote a pretty lengthy item yesterday about the census in which we talked primarily about the impact on representation in the House. However, there was an angle we missed. See if you can see the pattern:

Texas was expected to gain three seats, and gained two

Florida was expected to gain two seats, and gained one

Arizona was expected to gain one seat, and gained zero

The connection, if you haven't picked it up already, is that these are all Republican-led states with large Latino populations.

The obvious inference here is that Donald Trump may have failed in his efforts to get undocumented immigrants excluded from reapportionment, but he was partly successful in causing Latinos to be undercounted, at least in places where the state government was happy to play along. In addition to the list above, it is also the case that New York and California—blue states with large Latino populations—were potential candidates to lose two seats each, but ultimately only lost one each.

In short, it sure looks like Trump managed to shoot the GOP in the foot. At least two of the lost seats in Texas/Florida/Arizona would have ended up in Republican hands, and maybe all three. And the larger lessons here would seem to be that: (1) manipulating the system is harder than it looks, and (2) Republicans have been pretty bad at it recently, between the census, and USPS shenanigans, and voting restrictions that may hurt the Party's working-class base more than anyone else. (Z)

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by Anonymousreply 25May 3, 2021 11:53 PM

How often have we increases electoral votes/congressional seats?

by Anonymousreply 26May 4, 2021 12:05 AM

[quote] And all those liberals are moving down to Texas, Florida, and NC...

Link.

by Anonymousreply 27May 4, 2021 12:13 AM

New York City experienced a significant population shift last year, with four of its five counties losing a greater percentage of people than almost any other major county in the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau detailed Thursday.

Data analysts from the Census Bureau point to migration as the primary factor behind such significant shifts in population from 2020 to 2021. But not every county is down. The bureau found that at least 65% of metropolitan areas felt a population increase from 2020 to 2021.

The New York metro area lead all others in population loses, according to the census data. The combination of New York, Newark and Jersey City reflected a population loss of more than 385,000 people, almost double that of the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Anaheim region.

“The patterns we’ve observed in domestic migration shifted in 2021,” said Dr. Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for estimates and projections in the Census Bureau’s Population Division.

by Anonymousreply 28March 27, 2022 2:36 PM

There is a way out of this mess. There has to be. I hold both parties accountable for the mess we're in because their concerns are not for the people who vote for them; we've discussed this here more than once. And the voters on both sides are either too stupid or too apathetic to care enough to do something about it. And I ain't talking about that insurrectionist white nationalist bullshit that the Republicans tried to pull on January 6.

by Anonymousreply 29March 27, 2022 9:06 PM

Both sides is crap

by Anonymousreply 30March 28, 2022 11:41 AM

[quote]The combination of New York, Newark and Jersey City reflected a population loss of more than 385,000 people, almost double that of the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Anaheim region.

Why are Newark and Jersey City's populations combined with NYC's when the populations of those two cities increased?

Jersey City went from 247,597 in 2010 to 292,449 in 2020.

And Newark went from 277,140 in 2010 to 311,549.

It's NYC that is the problem.

by Anonymousreply 31March 28, 2022 11:53 AM

Old news and teh Dems didn't do as badly as feared. God, this troll stuff is tiresome.

by Anonymousreply 32March 28, 2022 12:06 PM
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