Late census data puts House 2022 campaigns in limbo

Published March 8, 2021 11:30am ET



A key factor in who wins the House majority, how lines are drawn for the bulk of its 435 districts, may not be clear until later this year. And that’s adding an element of chaos to the 2022 election cycle.

It’s not even clear at this point how many House seats each state will have in the 435-member chamber. That’s because the U.S. Census Bureau in February announced that processing of data needed to allocate House seats, based on population, would be pushed back from March 31 until Sept. 30. COVID-19 is largely to blame for the delays, as census-takers couldn’t as easily as in previous years knock on doors and count the U.S. population, as mandated by the Constitution every 10 years.

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