Election Data Services has updated its projections (PDF) for Congressional re-apportionment after the 2010 census, taking into account population changes over the past year. (You can find a summary of EDS’s 2007 findings here.) The news is good in particular for the state of New York.
This time, EDS offers five different models for projecting every state’s population two years hence. The column headers indicate the range of time used to come up with each projection.
| State | 2000-2008 | 2004-2008 | 2005-2008 | 2006-2008 | 2007-2008 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| California | 0 | -1 | -1 | -1 | 0 |
| Florida | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Georgia | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Illinois | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| Iowa | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| Louisiana | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| Massachusetts | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| Michigan | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| Minnesota | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| Missouri | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| Nevada | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| New Jersey | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| New York | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| North Carolina | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Ohio | -2 | -2 | -2 | -2 | -2 |
| Oregon | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Pennsylvania | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 |
| South Carolina | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Texas | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Utah | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
As you can see, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the models. Only four states aren’t uniform across the board: California, Florida, North Carolina, and Oregon. CA & OR apparently have seen a recent uptick in relative growth while FL and NC have experienced the opposite.
The bigger deal, though, are the changes compared to last year’s survey. The previous version of this study used three models rather than five, but all of them showed NY losing two seats. Now, all five EDS projections show NY losing just one seat. This might hardly seem like something to cheer about for a state which had 45 House seats just half a century ago, but I for one am glad.
So where does this seat probably come from? As it happens, it’s a state known for its sizable ex-New Yorker population. Three of the five current models (and all of them the shortest-term) show Florida dropping a seat while only one of three did in 2007. Meanwhile, Minnesota now looks pretty certain to lose a seat while South Carolina appears set to gain one.
Things could of course still change over the next two years. As EDS notes, the economic crisis has already reduced migration rates to their lowest level since the 1940s (when the government first started tracking this information). A worsening recession could cause even more people to stay put, changing these numbers yet again. We’ll just have to wait and see.
California won’t be losing a seat after all! What a relief. I was so worried that state growth wasn’t keeping up with national growth. I guess it looks like Cali will grow just enough to avoid NY’s fate. 😉
Hopefully, this means another blue seat for this new Blue State. 😉
the 2008 election look like under this reapportionment?
Some quick arithmetic shows that if every state votes the same in 2012, the new electoral score is 358 to 180, or Republican plus seven. Obama’s got quite a cushion, and I’m not particularly worried about his re-election, but I just thought I’d note that the growth is in Republican territory.
Poof! Chris Lee is no longer a congressman after 2012.
If the Big 3 do collapse that we’ll see a bigger than expected out-migration from Michigan? David pointed out that the recession will probably make more people stay put, but I wonder if the sheer size of the potential job-loss in Michigan (I’ve seen estimates pushing one million once you factor associated industries which would of course collapse with the Big 3) will cause a lot of people to pick-up and leave just because they literally have no other choice.
I hate to see my home state probably losing a seat but part of me hopes Minnesota does. It would be soooo easy to carve up MN-06 (it borders 6 of the 7 other districts) and finaly get rid of Michelle Bachmann once and for all.
Bachmann just bought a house in Woodbury which is in the far southeast corner of her district. It would be easy to throw her into either the current 2nd vs John Kline (R) or into the Dem leaning current 4th vs Betty McCollum (D). Either way she is toast.
then the NY Dems ought to think long and hard about potentially axing one of their own. Reducing the NY Republican delegation to 1 likely isn’t sustainable. You might play games with Peter King’s district, but I worry about our strength upstate.
As of 2008, a member of congress on average represents about 700,000 people. 1 person representing 700,000? Sometimes it’s more; Montana has 1 person for over 950,000.
New York City has 51 city council members representing over 8,000,000 people. A little over 150,000 per member.
Los Angeles has 15 city council members representing a little over 3.8 million. About 250,000 per member.
Houston has 14 city council members (9 single member, 5 at-large) representing over 2,000,000 people. About 220,000 per member.
Why not increase the size of the House. The last time it was increased was in 1959 when Hawaii was added, but was later brought down to 435 to comply with federal law.
In addition to differing projections for CA, FL, NC and OR, there are several other states on the edge.
Based on Table J, following are states that could end up with a different number of seats than the models predict:
IL 0 (vs. -1)
MN 0 (vs. -1)
MO 0 (vs. -1)
NY
2 (vs.1)PA
2 (vs.1)SC 0 (vs. +1)
TX +3 (vs. +4)
WA +1 (vs. 0)
Of these, Washington is the most likely to break through.
Louisiana also has a very outside chance of not losing any seats.
The thing about reapportionment is that ALL people are counted. That means both legal citizens and illegal ones, even though large numbers cannot vote. I say a study somewhere that showed Texas, California and Florida get something like 6 or 7 extra districts off of non-citizens alone. All that does is give whites in places like Texas more political power than they should have in the short-term since their vote counts for more because the large number of non-citizens cannot vote.
The same can be said for incarceration. The massively disproportionate number of blacks and latinos in prison or out of jail but stripped of their right to vote has the same effect.
Georgia’s new district will likely be somewhere in the metro Atlanta area. That can either be good or bad for us depending on where it is and who’s drawing the lines.