Local: Census: California officially loses a congressional seat in the House of Representatives.
‘Psychological blow’ says Claremont McKenna College politics professor
For the first time since becoming a state, California has officially lost a congressional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The U.S. Census Bureau on Monday afternoon released the 2020 population count, which is set to reshape not only the political landscape in the Golden State but the nation as a whole.
Conducted once every 10 years, the count determines, among other things, how many of the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives each state gets. With a larger population than any other state — 39,576,757 people, according to the latest data, California will continue to have more seats than anyplace else. But the delegation will shrink from 53 to 52.
“That’s a psychological blow,” said Claremont McKenna College politics professor Jack Pitney.
New York, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and West Virginia will also each lose a seat.
Texas will gain two seats, while North Carolina, Florida, Oregon, Montana and Colorado will each pick up one. The movement could affect Electoral College votes that determine presidential races.
“It shifts some power in the House toward Republican-leaning states,” Pitney said. “In a very close election, this could make a difference, but it isn’t a huge surprise.”
According to Paul Mitchell of California-based Political Data Inc., the shift might have been even greater had places like Texas and Florida stepped up their outreach to encourage people to complete census ques
tionnaires. Many analysts expected Texas to pick up several seats and for Florida to gain two.
“Those states are really upset,” Mitchell said, noting that even though California lost a seat, it won’t really give up too much political power on the national stage.
Asked about the impacts of the pandemic and the possibility of undercounting hard-toreach populations, bureau officials said during a call with reporters Monday they had shifted their outreach to people — moving advertisements from sports games to pizza box lids, for instance — and are confident in the count.
Within California, the dynamics may also shift.
The Census Bureau won’t release more detailed, city-level data for several months, but projections from other census reports suggests the Bay Area may see a slight boost in political clout. There is no official word yet on citylevel population shifts, including whether San Jose has lost its ranking as the 10th largest city to Austin in Texas.
The data “suggests the Bay Area has been growing a little bit faster than the rest of the state and Los Angeles County has been growing a little bit slower than the rest of the state, so the Bay Area may gain a little power and L.A. may lose a little power,” Mitchell said.
Statewide, California is losing a seat in part because population growth has slowed in recent years, with some residents fleeing California’s expensive housing market for places like Texas and Idaho.
Karen Battle, chief of the bureau’s Population Division, said California has experienced a natural increase in population since the last count in 2010, meaning there were more births than deaths. There was also positive net international migration, Battle said, but negative net domestic migration, meaning more people moving to other states than moving in.
“That contributed to the population count,” Battle said.
It’s not yet clear whether redrawing districts, a job done by a nonpartisan commission, will benefit Republicans or Democrats. Although, as Pitney noted, “if all current members want re-election, somebody gets voted off the island.”
But because the California Voting Rights Act bars discrimination, for instance against Asian American and Latino voters, those in charge of redrawing districts will be looking closely at where different ethnic population changes have occurred and factoring those changes into the districts, Mitchell said.
As of now, “it’s hard to say who will benefit,” he said.
Already, the California Republican Party is blaming Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for the lost House seat.
“Californians will have one less voice to speak for us in Washington, which proves yet again that it’s time for change and real leadership,” party chairperson essica Millan Patterson said in a statement.
Nationwide, seven seats will shift among 13 states, the smallest shift since the current calculation was adopted in 1941. The average number of people in each House district will be 761,169 people, an increase of roughly 50,000 people since the last count in 2010.
In addition to House seats, the census count will determine how federal funds are distributed and influence everything from how many teachers an area needs to hire to where to build housing and roads.
According to the latest count, the U.S. population is just shy of 331.5 million, up about 7.4% from 2010, which is the second-slowest rate in history. The growth rate from 2000 to 2010 was roughly 9%. Growth occurred in the South and West, while it was slowest in the Midwest. Utah grew the fastest at a rate of more than 18%, while West Virginia actually saw a population decline.
“We use the data to make sure the economy is working for everyone,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “For all those who participated, thank you for participating in democracy.”