Once-A-Decade Census Numbers to Redraw U.S. Political Landscape

April 25, 2021, 7:00 AM EDT

The once-a-decade battle to redraw the U.S. political map promises to be one of the most contentious ever when it kicks off this week, shadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and hindered by partisan divisions stoked during Donald Trump’s presidency.

The process starts with the release from last year’s constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the U.S., which happens every 10 years. That’ll determine which states gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and which ones lose. Democrats hold a narrow advantage now, and the shift of just a few seats could tip power back to Republican hands as soon as 2022.

States that Trump won in 2020 stand to gain House seats at the expense of seats in states won by President Joe Biden, thanks to population shifts. Gaining a seat in Congress also means gaining a vote in the Electoral College, which could affect the outcome of a close 2024 presidential race. And if the migration to Republican states is by mostly Democratic voters, it could portend a geographic shift in the states’ political identities.

This year’s effort promises to be particularly chaotic following the extreme gerrymandering of 2011, and Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to give Republicans an advantage by asking the U.S. Census Bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count.

A lot has changed since states last redrew their districts. The long-term trend of migration to the South and West has hastened, likely giving states like Texas and Florida more members of Congress at the expense of the Northeast. Some states now require more bipartisan map-making to avoid the crazy-quilt shape of districts that partisans drew 10 years ago.

House seat apportionment over time, by region 👆

Western and Sun Belt states have gained influence over the last 50 years.

Midwest
Northeast
South
West

Notes: Apportionment in 1789 reflects numbers original apportionment made in the Constitution, pending the first Census. No apportionment was made in 1920.

Source: Election Data Services

‘Beyond the Reach’

And the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated it won’t take partisan gerrymandering cases, ruling in 2019 that issues of how to draw districts are “political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” Yet the highest courts in the states—including those with Democratic and Republican elected justices—are taking up cases that come before them.

“This is going to be an extraordinarily consequential redistricting cycle, and it comes a decade after the cycle that proved once and for all that gerrymandering can change our state and national politics for the next 10 years or more,” said David Daley, the author of a book on the 2011 redistricting who now works for FairVote, a nonpartisan group that pushes for redistricting reform.

The state-population numbers were due Dec. 31 but have been delayed until the end of April because of the pandemic. They’ll show how many people live in each state, and how many House districts each state will get. By September, the bureau will release another set of numbers with block-by-block population counts, allowing states to draw districts of equal size to account for population shifts over the past decade.

That’s when the politics begins.

High-Stakes Counts

The party in charge can often redraw those lines to give itself an advantage. By dividing the opposition party’s likely voters among several districts, partisan mapmakers can craft strong and difficult-to-flip districts for their party, a process known as gerrymandering.

Six states have adopted new systems for drawing the lines, intended to force bipartisan consensus, sometimes by using citizen commissions.

Source: Justin Levitt, All About Redistricting

Democrats control the House of Representatives by less than half a dozen seats—the smallest margin of either party in 20 years. So even minimal changes to Congress’s geographic makeup could help flip the balance of power. The Senate stays the same, with two members from each state, elected statewide, regardless of population.

If, as expected, the 2020 census confirms the long-term trend of population migration away from the Northeast and Midwest, states that Trump won in 2020 are likely to pick up new seats at the expense of states that President Joe Biden won.

No Expansion

Re-apportionment is a zero-sum game: Congress has capped the size of the House of Representatives at 435 since 1910, with exceptions for new states joining the Union. That means for one state to gain representation, another has to lose.

Calculation of Representation 👆

The Constitution originally set congressional districts at about 33,000 constituents. Now, with population growth and the number of seats stuck at 435, that number has grown to 800,000 or more.

Source: Pew Research Center

According to independent projections by Election Data Services, which provides redistricting consulting for state and local governments, Texas will likely gain three seats and Florida two. Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon are also in line for expanded representation.

New York could lose two seats, and Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia could lose one each. Alabama could lose a seat if New York manages to lose only one.

California, a Democratic stronghold, could lose a seat for the first time ever, EDS projects.

The numbers will affect not only the makeup of the U.S. House, but the Electoral College that decides the presidency, because each state gets electoral votes based on its number of House districts plus its two senators.

High-Water Mark

States can’t get on with redrawing their congressional district maps until they get the detailed data later this year. Those figures—which count the number of people down to the block level—are important to ensure that every district within the same state is of equal population size.

But legislators or other map-makers can draw the districts’ lines almost however they want—as long as districts are of equal size and don’t violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority voters—and can easily manipulate the composition of a state’s congressional district to benefit their party. That “gerrymandering” tradition—named for a salamander-shaped Massachusetts district created in 1812—hit a high-water mark in the 2011 redistricting efforts.

The 2010 midterm elections saw a Tea Party backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency, helping Republicans take control of the U.S. House and hundreds of down-ballot legislative seats.

Source: City University of New York Center for Urban Research

The following year, Republicans in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, among other states, were able to draw maps that allowed them to win a majority of the state’s congressional seats, even in years when more Democrats than Republicans cast votes state-wide.

Powerful ‘Firewalls’

It was only after the highest state courts in Pennsylvania and North Carolina ordered new maps for 2018 that Democrats took control of the House.

“That’s a pretty clear example of the power of these lines and how they can build firewalls,” Daley said.

This time, Republicans are once again well-positioned to give themselves an advantage, especially in states like Texas and Florida.

Republicans control the process in 16 of the states where politicians draw congressional boundaries, including Texas, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina. Democrats control seven of those states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Divided government in eight other states will likely force bipartisan compromises. In 12 states, independent commissions draw the lines, and seven states will likely have only one district and won’t need to draw congressional boundaries at all.

This time, Democrats are hoping the political winds favor them.

Down-Ballot Blues

“People weren’t dialed in on what redistricting means for their lives,” said Kelly Ward Burton, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which launched in 2017. “This is totally different. There’s a huge awareness of what the Republican redistricting has done to our politics.”

Still, Biden’s victory over Trump overshadowed down-ballot Democratic losses in 2020 that could help Republicans press their advantage for the next decade.

“The 2020 elections were really good for Republicans down ballot, period,” said Adam Kincaid, president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. “Democrats were definitely asleep at the switch in 2010. They were not in 2020, and they still lost.”

Democrats were unable to flip any state legislative chambers in 2020, and Republicans gained a majority in the New Hampshire House and Senate. With Republican Chris Sununu in the governor’s office, the GOP there will now have free rein to draw a map that could give them a better chance to win one of New Hampshire’s two congressional seats, both now held by Democrats.

Some states have new systems for drawing lines. Under a 2018 constitutional amendment, the new Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission consists of 13 people—four Republicans, four Democrats and five independents—selected from a pool of applicants.

Ohio’s system, also adopted in 2018, encourages the state legislature to pass a map with a bipartisan supermajority. But if that fails, there are three backup systems: a bipartisan commission of state elected officials, a smaller bipartisan majority, and finally a simple majority of the Republican legislature—but with increasingly stringent rules that can be enforced by a now Democratic-controlled Ohio Supreme Court.

And in New York, a new 10-member commission will recommend maps to the state legislature, which must vote them up or down, and can only amend the maps on the third try. Colorado, Utah, and Virginia have also enacted changes to their redistricting laws since 2011.

But in states where a single party is in control of the maps, the technological ability to draw ever-more-precise maps to give one party an advantage has only increased over the last decade.

“We are better at gerrymandering than we ever have been before,” Daley said.

Correction: Corrects list of states where Republicans redrew congressional lines in 2011, in 22nd paragraph. Corrects description of which party will control the process in key states in 26th paragraph.