At RealClearPolitics Sean Trende speculates on the upcoming reapportioning to take place following the 2020 decennial census. What’s likely to happen?
In other words, Florida, Arizona and Texas are “on the bubble†for their 29th, 10th, and 39th seats, while California is close to losing a seat, while Illinois is close to losing a second seat. With some relatively minor changes in population growth patterns, we could easily see one of them fail to win these seats. If one of these states does miss the projection, who could benefit? Seat Nos. 436-440 are projected to be: Montana 2 (436), Alabama 7 (437), California 54 (438), Minnesota 8 (439) and Virginia 12 (440). So we could see Montana gain back the seat that it lost after the 1990 census.
Overall, this represents very little change in the Electoral College. While the apportionment shifts are to states controlled by Republican legislatures (for now), it would probably benefit Democrats overall, as it is pretty difficult to eliminate any more Democratic seats in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, while states like Texas and Florida would probably have to draw at least some Democratic-leaning districts.
As I’ve written before I think we’re already seeing the effects of this in the outcome of the 2016 election. Deep Blue States aren’t quite as blue as they used to be while dark Red States were less red.
People are voting with their feet and those whose lives are most portable are moving first. Larger questions are how will the push and pull factors inducing the movement affect the situation? Who will blink first?
