Decennial (Updated)

In all of the hoopla and prognostications following the election a week ago I haven’t seen any note taken of the event likely to have more effect on the 2012 election than any other: the 2010 decennial census. You might want to take a look at this table of the population by state in 2000 and the estimated population in 2007 as well as the Congressional apportionment.

There are several assumptions I think we can make about the results of the 2010 census:

  1. A number of states that have reliably voted Democratic in recent elections will lose Congressional representatives, viz. California, Massachusetts, and New York, while a number of states that have reliably voted Republican in recent elections will gain Congressional representatives, viz. Texas and Utah.
  2. Some of the population shifts that occurred as a consequence or in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are likely to endure at least through the census.
  3. The current economic turndown is unlikely to reverse itself sufficiently by the time of the census that the states most affected by the turndown, e.g. California, Florida, New York, New Jersey, can escape its population effects.

I also think it’s possible that some of our resident alien population, discouraged by the job situation in the turndown, will return home, particularly to Mexico. This will affect California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Illinois (probably) the most.

Given those assumptions I think it’s quite likely that California will lose two seats, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois will all lose at least one seat, while Texas will gain at least three seats, and Florida, Arizona, Utah, North Carolina, and South Carolina will all gain at least one seat.

President Obama is likely to face a very different electoral map when he runs for re-election in 2012 than when he ran for election in 2008.

Update

Interestingly (and coincidentally), Karl Rove commented on the 2010 census, too:

This matters because the 2010 Census could allocate as many as four additional congressional districts to Texas, two each to Arizona and Florida, and one district to each of a number of (mostly) red-leaning states, while subtracting seats from (mostly) blue-leaning states like Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and, for the first time, California. Redistricting and reapportionment could help tilt the playing field back to the GOP in Congress and the race for the White House by moving seven House seats (and electoral votes) from mostly blue to mostly red states.

History will favor Republicans in 2010. Since World War II, the out-party has gained an average of 23 seats in the U.S. House and two in the U.S. Senate in a new president’s first midterm election. Other than FDR and George W. Bush, no president has gained seats in his first midterm election in both chambers.

Since 1966, the incumbent party has lost an average of 63 state senate and 262 state house seats, and six governorships, in a president’s first midterm election. That 2010 is likely to see Republicans begin rebounding just before redistricting is one silver lining in an otherwise dismal year for the GOP.

1 comment… add one
  • tom p Link

    Hmmmm, is Karl smoking some more of his famous “math”?

    “Redistricting and reapportionment could help tilt the playing field back to the GOP in Congress and the race for the White House by moving seven House seats (and electoral votes) from mostly blue to mostly red states.”

    7 electoral votes in the present clime hardly seems all that big a deal. This also precludes any discussion of the shifting demographics of the country as a whole… As tho TX, AZ, and FL, are going to gain all of their population on the “red” side, just because they are now so called “red” states,

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