Population trends boost Florida’s political clout

State poised to gain 2 seats, Electoral College votes following census

The steady flow of people moving to Florida helps keep the roads clogged with traffic and housing prices high. But the 640 newcomers every day for the last 10 years are bringing something that will benefit every Floridian: increased political clout.

The latest analysis of population trends shows Florida is likely to gain two seats in Congress and two more votes in the Electoral College that decides the presidency.

Both are a big deal.

“It’s tremendously important,” said Eric Eikenberg, who was chief of staff to the late South Florida Congressman Clay Shaw and is now CEO of the Everglades Foundation. “It’s a win-win across the board.”

Presidential elections

Florida already has a huge role is picking the president every four years because it’s a swing state, which can go for the Democrat or a Republican by a small margin. It also awards more than 10% of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

The other mega states with a lot of electoral votes are solidly Democratic (California and New York) or solidly Republican (Texas), which makes it especially important for presidential candidates to court Florida.

The population shifts would give the state more clout, with 31 of the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency.

One catch: the new numbers won’t be in effect for this year’s election. The new electoral vote totals start with the 2024 presidential election. For 2020, Florida has 29 electoral votes.

Congress

A larger number of seats in the U.S. House can be a big benefit to a state.

“As our congressional clout grows, our ability to get other things grows. If we have more congresspeople, that’s more clout,” said Steve Geller, a Broward County commissioner and former Democratic leader in the Florida Senate.

“Our delegation may battle bitterly on a lot of philosophical issues, but they frequently have been able to unite to try to bring things to Florida. The more votes we have, the more clout we have in D.C.,” Geller said.

That translates into more Florida influence on every kind of issue that comes before Congress, especially on subjects that have broad regional interest (such as the Everglades) as opposed to philosophical differences (like foreign policy).

Geller has long advocated for a national catastrophic insurance fund to help control costs of windstorm insurance in Florida. That’s the kind of issue that could have a better chance with Florida having greater representation.

A larger state delegation means more opportunities to fill positions on influential committees that craft legislation,

and — especially important — more potential for Floridians to hold chairmanships of committees and subcommittees.

The ability to have more Floridians on the Appropriations Committee “to bring the federal share of taxpayer dollars from Washington to Florida … is huge,” Eikenberg said.

Florida has five of the 53 seats on the House Appropriations Committee. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, is an appropriations subcommittee chairwoman, and she’s campaigning among her colleagues for the job of full committee chairwoman in the next Congress. In addition U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Currently

Florida is

home to one full committee chairman. U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-West Boca, is chairman of the Ethics Committee.

While the numbers used in reapportionment are the April 1 population figures, they’re not released until the end of the year. That means the districts will be redrawn before the 2022 congressional elections and won’t be used in the 2020 elections.

Power shift

Florida currently has 27 seats in the House of Representatives and 29 votes in the Electoral College. The latest analysis, from the consulting firm Election Data Services, shows the most likely scenario is 29 House seats and 31 electoral votes for Florida.

The analysis is based on projections using Census population estimates released on Dec. 30. The official numbers don’t come for months. They’ll be based on the 2020 Census, which measures the population on April 1 every 10 years.

The population numbers are used to divide the 435 congressional districts. And more congressional districts mean more Electoral College votes. Each state gets the number of seats in the House plus the number of seats in the Senate in the Electoral College.

States that are growing faster than the national average, like Florida and Texas, get more seats and electoral votes. States where population is declining, or increasing more slowly than the national average, lose. Those states are largely in the northeast and industrial Midwest.

From 2010 until July 1979, Census estimates show the U.S. population increased 6.3%.

In

Florida, the population

went up 14.2%, which translates into more seats.

In New York, the population increased 0.4%, which translates into losing a seat.

Not guaranteed

Florida’s gain certain.

“There are only 435 seats to hand out and you got the last one, with just 44,285 people to spare. That’s very close,” said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, Brace said, adding that Florida is in a “gray zone in that a lot of things could also happen that would deny you that second seat.”

Right now, neighboring Alabama loses a seat by only 10,000 people. It’s next in line (436) as seats are divided up, Brace said. If its count surged, with another 12,000 people, Alabama could leapfrog Florida for that last seat, he said. Brace isn’t completely

said there’s no realistic scenario under which Florida would gain a third seat.

Election Data Services said the results could be “majorly impacted” based on how well the federal government conducts the Census, how well the public participates, and whether the controversy last year about the Trump administration’s failed attempt to put a citizenship question in the Census discourages some people from taking part.

“Being undercounted has financial and political implications,” said Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University.

Many states have launched extensive and expensive efforts to make sure all their residents get counted. Local governments in Florida have been pushing “complete count” efforts, something the state hasn’t done until this week

when Gov. appointed committee issue.

Money

Ron DeSantis a 25-member to work on the

There’s another financial impact that comes from the Census. Lots of money from the federal government is distributed to states and communities based on population.

A larger population recorded in the Census translates into more money from Washington. A smaller count results in less money from the feds.

Not participating in the Census, Geller said, means “you are costing your local government money, which they will need to make up by raising taxes.”