President Trump’s bid to determine the citizenship of 2020 census respondents could give a long-term boost to Republicans, with estimates of the partisan effect ranging as high as four House seats.
Trump ended his legal fight to place the question on the census July 11, but issued an executive order that could achieve the same result, requiring federal agencies to supply data on citizenship to the Commerce Department.
The fallback option will help Republicans only if Alabama prevails in a federal lawsuit seeking to eliminate illegal immigrant respondents from census data used to allocate House seats.
The Alabama lawsuit survived an initial motion to dismiss last month, and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, said he’s optimistic about prevailing on the merits.
“In making the decision to file a lawsuit, we determined Alabama and Ohio would lose a seat if illegal immigrants are counted,” Marshall told the Washington Examiner.
Marshall said that he expects a more thorough state-by-state analysis of House seats as the case progresses.
“You have a dilution of lawful voters in this country,” Marshall said. “We believe it dilutes the voting authority for the states doing it right.”
The state lawsuit was directly referenced by Attorney General Bill Barr on Thursday during remarks in the Rose Garden, softening the blow as Trump gave up his census form fight in the wake of a Supreme Court defeat, with Chief Justice John Roberts calling an initial justification from the Trump administration contrived.
“There is a current dispute over whether illegal aliens can be included for apportionment purposes. Depending on the resolution of that dispute, this data may be relevant for those considerations,” Barr said.
Using available federal records, Trump said the Census Bureau could determine with greater than 90% accuracy the percentage of respondents who were citizens.
If illegal immigrants are excluded from census data, most experts acknowledge Republican-led states would benefit.
The Department of Homeland Security estimated in 2015 that there were nearly 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, with more than a quarter, almost 3 million people, living in California, followed by Texas with almost 2 million.
Ira Mehlman, media director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to reduce immigration, estimates California could lose four House seats, Texas two or three, and Florida and New York could each lose one. Additional states could be nudged over or under. Two Democratic-leaning states, Illinois and New Jersey, have the next-largest estimated illegal immigrant populations.
“What people should be thinking about is that reapportionment is a zero-sum game. House seats that are awarded to California because of a large presence of illegal aliens is representation that is denied to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants in other states,” Mehlman said. “In close elections, those electoral votes can determine the outcome.”
Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration, provided a four-seat estimate of the partisan effect, citing data he crunched recently for a consulting job.
Census data has a wide range of federal uses, but congressional apportionment is the most significant politically. Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics said the partisan stakes are apparent, even if the precise swing in seats is not.
“What is clear to me is that Republicans [wanted] the question because they believe it will benefit them, and Democrats don’t want it because they feel that way, too,” Kondik said.
