Changes in how many congressional representatives each state gets for 2022 and beyond appear to benefit Republicans — but only a little.
Redistricting fights to come will be much more influential in determining which party has an edge in “safe” congressional districts.
The Census Bureau revealed on Monday that as a result of the 2020 counting of the population, reapportionment of the 435 House seats means losses of districts in mostly Democratic-leaning states and gains in mostly Republican-leaning states. A total of seven seats are shifting: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia will lose one seat each, while Colorado, Florida, Oregon, Montana, and North Carolina will gain one seat each, and Texas will gain two.
Election analysts generally think that the shifting of seven seats could result in a small net boost for Republicans with the creation of more Republican-friendly seats in red states. That could mean a two- or three-seat edge — a figure that could make a difference in the instance of a closely divided House, but not as much an advantage as some were expecting.
TEXAS AND FLORIDA TO GET NEW HOUSE SEATS
“It could have been worse for the Democrats and even better for the Republicans,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “One of the biggest surprises yesterday was that Texas only gained two seats in Florida only gained one.”
Many stakeholders expected that Texas would gain three seats and Florida would gain two, which would have given Republican-controlled state legislatures in Texas and Florida in charge of the redistricting process more options to draw safe Republican districts.
Some analysts theorize that the Trump administration’s failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the census could have created a chilling effect that resulted in Hispanic and Latino people being under-counted, perhaps accounting for the smaller-than-expected gains for Texas and Florida.
“Those states are controlled by Republicans, so that may be a bit ironic,” Coleman said of an under-counting of Hispanics and Latinos harming Republicans.
As a whole, the reapportionment is not likely to be the tipping point for which party wins the House in 2022 and the next four election cycles.
This census-driven shuffling of seven seats is the smallest reapportionment in a century. There were 12 seats that shifted after the 2010 and 2000 censuses and 19 seats after the 1990 census.
With that low number, it is the shape and demographics in the districts rather than the number of districts that each state has that could be a determinative factor in 2022 and beyond.
Every state with more than one House district, 43, will redraw its congressional district lines, potentially affecting the partisan advantage in states that had no loss or gain of seats. Lower-level data about population shifts within states that will be used for redistricting will be released later this year.
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on both parties in states that they kind of control to be as aggressive as possible,” Coleman said.
Battles in redistricting meetings and legal challenges to new maps could theoretically be important partisan factors than the reapportionment.
Because Democrats have the slimmest House majority since the 1930s and the party opposite from that of the president historically makes gains in midterm elections, Republicans are already well-positioned to win back the House in 2022.
Aside from partisan control of the House, the other political consequence of the reapportionment is the Electoral College and what that means for 2024.
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Taking this reapportionment and applying that to the 2020 election would only slightly chip away at President Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over former President Donald Trump, shifting it to 303 to 235.
But it could still shift presidential campaign strategy and math. As the New York Times’s Nate Cohn noted, previous wisdom for 2020 was that whoever wins three of the five smaller states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will win the election. With the reapportionment, that math no longer adds up, requiring another smaller state to cross the 270-Electoral College vote threshold.
