Gerry Mander has always been the Republicans’ best friend. Now results of the 2020 Census are showing a shifting population and redistricting will begin to take place in the fall. Thirteen states gaining or losing a House seat would not be a topic of such intense scrutiny if the electorate was not already polarized and the Democrats holding slim majorities in both House and Senate. Axios:
Between the lines:Â Apportionment, which happens every ten years, is the process of dividing up the 435 House seats according to the latest population counts for each state. That’s measured by the Census, held the first year of each decade.
- The full Census data that will be used for redistricting — the process of drawing new electoral districts in states — will not be publicly released until the end of September.
- The delay was caused by the coronavirus and the Trump administration’s attempts to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the Census count, which they believed would benefit Democrats.
Democrats are bracing for GOP-friendly district lines, since Republicans have unified control of the congressional redistricting process in 18 states as opposed to seven for the Democrats, according to the Brennan Center.
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“Redistricting could likely determine who controls the House of Representatives in 2022, but also going into the next decade,” Stanford Law School’s Nate Persily, a redistricting expert, told Axios.
California lost a seat, for the first time ever. So did Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Texas picked up two seats, the only state to do so. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon picked up one seat. Another interesting stat is West Virginia’s population declining at the fastest rate, while the fastest growing state is Utah.
Another stat the political scientists will be looking at is stagnating population growth. This decade, the U.S. saw a 7.4% increase in total population, the second slowest increase in history. This is somewhat ironic, considering the fact that the Republicans’ key talking point is how the borders are being overrun with immigrants, both legal and illegal. Just one more instance of actual facts and figures blowing away the hysteria they spew to keep the base enraged and outraged.
‘I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.’
said in 1923; Boris Bazhanov The Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary (1992)
Not that many years ago, using a quote by Stalin to back up Republican policies would have been thought absolutely preposterous.
And now it isn’t.
I don’t think the seat realignment was terrible news…I think it was one of the best case scenarios, honestly. The data suggested a dozen or so seats moving to red states back in 2018. I think of the seven losses as:
WV – GOP loss, so take that, LOL.
MI, OH, PA – these states are so heavily gerrymandered that I think the loss will be a net loss for the GOP. That is, I don’t think they can pack Democrats further. They’ll try, but we could actually come out several seats ahead of we use the reduced seats to result in new, fairer maps.
CA – it’s not clear to me where the lost seat will come from. Generally, rural areas are losing more population. But there are so many seats to this map that I don’t think it’s possible to determine which side loses. Odds suggest it’s a Dem loss, but I think we’ll see some competitive districts in 2022 and maybe it all comes out a wash. CA21 and 25 are on a razor’s edge, it doesn’t take the boundaries shifting by more than a few blocks to dilute Republicans out of those districts.
IL and NY…no idea.
Overall, I feel this takes seats that split 4/3 in the GOP’s favor and distribute them places where they’re kinda likely to split 4/3 or 3/4. Not nearly as big a deal as how the maps are drawn…that’s where the real fight is.