USA 2020 Census Results Thread (Release: Today, 26 April)

[Storr]

New York was 89 people away from not losing any seats?

What.

I guess when those people were declaring "I'm leaving New York!" they actually meant leaving Manhattan for Westchester or LI.

Or barely anyone other than a few self-important pundits actually left cities?

Anyway, this is good but CA losing while so many other places don't is just disgusting.

Oh there were definitely people who left cities, just 1) not as much as the media portrayed it, and 2) not as far from major cities as the media also portrayed--people moved from Manhattan to Jersey City/Westchester, or from DC to Arlington/Alexandria

The answer was incorrect in terms of the intent of the question. By my calculation NY needed 3,056 more people to overtake MN. The spread in the proportional value for the seat was less than 100. I'll post the bubble seats with their proportional value shortly so you can judge how close states were to the threshold.

I think
89 is the correct answer.

Quotient for Minnesota is 5,709,752 / sqrt (7* = 762998

New York would need a population of 762998 * sqrt (26*27) = 20,215,840

New York change needed is 20,215,840 - 20,215,751 = 89

I agree with this. I relied on the table in Tender's original link, and that turned out to not include overseas population. That cut the shortage from over 3K to under 100. Given all the uncertainty in the Census collection and given that the pandemic was most prominent in NYC on Census Day, I would not be surprised to see a lawsuit to address the NY situation.

Utah's lawsuit over the 2000 Census was based on a significantly larger differential, wasn't it? I seem to recall they lost out on their fourth seat to North Carolina based on a few hundred people at least. Of course, they ultimately lost their suit, too, but I think it did result in some shifts in the numbers, maybe even enough to make a difference for New York this time if the same changes applied.

Yeah, Utah's 2000 Census lawsuit was over 856 people. (The state which won that 435th seat was, of course, North Carolina.)

A table at the bottom of this page I've linked shows the additional population the runner-up state needed to get the 435th seat.
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/apportionment-2020-tableB.pdf

[patzer]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

[MoreThanPolitics]

Hot take: Cuomo is the main reason why NY loses a seat

[jimrtex]

Puerto Rico lost 11.8% of it's population since 2010 and hasn't had this few people on the island since the 1980s.

Here’s a big part of your explanation for those NY/NJ undercounts.

This is probably wrong but I assume it's harder to count PR-born residents since they can move freely to the US? It'd be like tracking inter-state movements.

Possibly, some consider themselves to be visiting relatives in Florida or New York. The flight is not that expensive. You can stay at your cousin's. You can find a service job through family connections. You don't need a green card and can legally work, unlike someone who is here on a tourist visa.

You might return to Puerto Rico in the winter. Your visits might become longer and longer. At some point you might decide that you are resident, but even then do you consider yourself a New Yorker, or Floridian? Maybe your child who graduates from CUNY or UCF does.

The Census Bureau estimates for interstate migration are based largely on IRS and SSA records (they don't get the 1040s, but name-address records). Someone who is seasonally in the USA might continue to file in Puerto Rico.

So it may be harder to track Puerto Rico to the mainland migration than it is interstate migration.

[Skill and Chance]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

It also has the potential to change close presidential election outcomes.  2000 flips by roughly doubling the size of the House and 1916 would have flipped with a stadium-size House roughly 60X the current size!

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

Someone could try a lawsuit that this constitutional amendment was ratified by Connecticut in 1789 and 1790 and so is valid, and that the amendment is supposed to have one representative per 50,000 or maybe 60,000 people.

Or another 27 states could ratify it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment#Text

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I honestly doubt with the population shift republicans can draw a consistent two safe seats, they might have to sacrifice one to the dems to save another. I’m really curious where the new seats gained go regardless

What state are you referring to?

All of them really, I’m just curious as to how it shapes out the maps as I am a map nerd

[patzer]

Someone could try a lawsuit that this constitutional amendment was ratified by Connecticut in 1789 and 1790 and so is valid, and that the amendment is supposed to have one representative per 50,000 or maybe 60,000 people.

Or another 27 states could ratify it.

Well, that’d be interesting given that its ratification would give the House around seven thousand members! You’d need a new building to fit them all in...

Districts that small do help local representation, but I can’t help but think thousands of representatives might be a bit much.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Someone could try a lawsuit that this constitutional amendment was ratified by Connecticut in 1789 and 1790 and so is valid, and that the amendment is supposed to have one representative per 50,000 or maybe 60,000 people.

Or another 27 states could ratify it.

Well, that’d be interesting given that its ratification would give the House around seven thousand members! You’d need a new building to fit them all in...

Districts that small do help local representation, but I can’t help but think thousands of representatives might be a bit much.

I once did a little exploration into what a map like that would look like. Wyoming had 11 seats. I also once did a series of districts the size of England’s districts (70k), California had 516 seats alone

[Boss_Rahm]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

Someone could try a lawsuit that this constitutional amendment was ratified by Connecticut in 1789 and 1790 and so is valid, and that the amendment is supposed to have one representative per 50,000 or maybe 60,000 people.

Or another 27 states could ratify it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment#Text

One way to apply this amendment is to interpret it recursively, so that every time the number of representatives increases by one hundred, the quota increases by ten thousand. In that version, the applicable clause would be:

"...there shall not be less than seventeen hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every two hundred thousand persons."

Assuming that Congress would maintain the tradition of having an odd number of Representatives, here's the apportionment of 1,701 seats based on the 2020 Census:

AL    26
AK    4
AZ    37
AR    15
CA    203
CO    30
CT    18
DE    5
FL    111
GA    55
HI    8
ID    9
IL    66
IN    35
IA    16
KS    15
KY    23
LA    24
ME    7
MD    32
MA    36
MI    52
MN    29
MS    15
MO    32
MT    6
NE    10
NV    16
NH    7
NJ    48
NM    11
NY    104
NC    54
ND    4
OH    61
OK    20
OR    22
PA    67
RI    6
SC    26
SD    5
TN    35
TX    150
UT    17
VT    3
VA    44
WA    40
WV    9
WI    30
WY    3

[jimrtex]

If NY had 89 more people, it wouldn't have lost seats?? This is crazy

MN is #435

Cuomo single-handedly cost New York a seat.

Who cost Texas its third?

RI, AL, MN

cost AZ, TX, FL

The 2020 Census was about 1% higher than an estimate based on the July 2020 estimates interpolated to April 1, 2020.

TX and FL were not quite that high, while AZ was lower than the estimate.

RI was much higher than the estimate - the census estimate for RI was among the worst for some reason. This is pretty odd since there is not much migration to/from Rhode Island and birth/deaths are easier to track. TX, AZ, and FL are harder to estimate because of large scale migration, both interstate and international.

TX gained enough for an increase of 2.8, but it was from 35.6 to 38.4 (they just barely got 36, and didn't quite get 39. They are quite likely to get +3 in 2030, with a chance of +4 with a small uptick.

[jimrtex]

New York was 89 people away from not losing any seats?

What.

I guess when those people were declaring "I'm leaving New York!" they actually meant leaving Manhattan for Westchester or LI.

Or barely anyone other than a few self-important pundits actually left cities?

Anyway, this is good but CA losing while so many other places don't is just disgusting.

Oh there were definitely people who left cities, just 1) not as much as the media portrayed it, and 2) not as far from major cities as the media also portrayed--people moved from Manhattan to Jersey City/Westchester, or from DC to Arlington/Alexandria

The answer was incorrect in terms of the intent of the question. By my calculation NY needed 3,056 more people to overtake MN. The spread in the proportional value for the seat was less than 100. I'll post the bubble seats with their proportional value shortly so you can judge how close states were to the threshold.

I think
89 is the correct answer.

Quotient for Minnesota is 5,709,752 / sqrt (7* = 762998

New York would need a population of 762998 * sqrt (26*27) = 20,215,840

New York change needed is 20,215,840 - 20,215,751 = 89

I agree with this. I relied on the table in Tender's original link, and that turned out to not include overseas population. That cut the shortage from over 3K to under 100. Given all the uncertainty in the Census collection and given that the pandemic was most prominent in NYC on Census Day, I would not be surprised to see a lawsuit to address the NY situation.

Utah's lawsuit over the 2000 Census was based on a significantly larger differential, wasn't it? I seem to recall they lost out on their fourth seat to North Carolina based on a few hundred people at least. Of course, they ultimately lost their suit, too, but I think it did result in some shifts in the numbers, maybe even enough to make a difference for New York this time if the same changes applied.

The Census Bureau included this table showing the gap by decade.

Additional Apportionment Population Needed for First Runner-Up State to Gain Another Congressional Seat: 1940 to 2020 (PDF)

The difference in quotient between Minnesota and New York was only 4. The expected gap average gap is around 1800. This census was easily in the 99th percentile for closeness.

New York could conceivably demand a recount.

They might also sue over exclusion of non-resident civilians. The apportionment population is used to determine the number of representatives in Congress. Congress requires that civilians residing overseas be permitted to vote for those representatives, but excludes them in determining how many there are. This would seem to violate equal protection.

With New York having a very large immigrant population, it also a large number of persons who return to their birth country, even if they were naturalized.

[cinyc]

If NY had 89 more people, it wouldn't have lost seats?? This is crazy

MN is #435

Cuomo single-handedly cost New York a seat.

Who cost Texas its third?

RI, AL, MN

cost AZ, TX, FL

The 2020 Census was about 1% higher than an estimate based on the July 2020 estimates interpolated to April 1, 2020.

TX and FL were not quite that high, while AZ was lower than the estimate.

RI was much higher than the estimate - the census estimate for RI was among the worst for some reason. This is pretty odd since there is not much migration to/from Rhode Island and birth/deaths are easier to track. TX, AZ, and FL are harder to estimate because of large scale migration, both interstate and international.

TX gained enough for an increase of 2.8, but it was from 35.6 to 38.4 (they just barely got 36, and didn't quite get 39. They are quite likely to get +3 in 2030, with a chance of +4 with a small uptick.

My take is AZ cost AZ - it’s the only state whose results really came in much, much lower than the 7/1/2020 PEP estimates rolled back to April 1. But NY’s and especially RI’s vastly exceeding those 7/1/20 expectations (combined with AL exceeding expectations and MN doing a little better) is a bigger  part of the story than most give credit. Yes, TX and FL slightly underperformed expectations, but just by a little, comparatively.

AZ greatly missed the mark in 2010, too, according to Pew.

So, are the PEP estimates bad in the Northeast (and PR) or is something funky with the Census?

[jimrtex]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

This was what was done after the 1910 Census and also the 1870 Census.

In 1910, the effects of large-scale immigration to the industrializing northeast, rather than the homesteading west. Remember, Iowa was tenth largest in 1900.

So rather than reducing representation in states that had never lost representatives they expanded the House to 433 members (435 after NM and AZ entered the Union in 1912, and this was provided for in the Apportionment Act).

One reason no apportionment was done after the 1920 Census was a reluctance to repeat that process every decade. This led to the decision before the 1930 Census to fix the size of the Congress, and use a mathematical calculation. The law doesn't actually say "435" but rather says the current number of representatives.

When Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union just before the 1960 Census, two representatives were added to temporarily increase the House to 437, but the statute provided for reversion to the previous number at the next Census.

The apportionment law for the 1930 Census provided for using both Huntington-Hill and Webster's method. It did not matter in 1930.

It did matter after the 1940 Census. Huntington-Hill is more favorable to smaller states, and Huntington-Hill would switch a representative from Michigan to Arkansas. Given that the representative from Arkansas was certain to be a Democrat, and from Michigan likely to be a Republican, the decision was made to use Huntington-Hill.

I am almost certain that Webster's method would flip the seat from Minnesota to New York.  

It would make more sense to use independent rounding.

If a state had between n.5 / 435 and (n+1).5 / 435 of the population then it would receive n+1 representatives.

The total size of the House would vary a bit from Congress to Congress but that really doesn't matter.

[jimrtex]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

It also has the potential to change close presidential election outcomes.  2000 flips by roughly doubling the size of the House and 1916 would have flipped with a stadium-size House roughly 60X the current size!

Oddly enough, the 2000 election would have only flipped because they were using a decade-old obsolete apportionment at the time. The 2000 population of Bush states was infinitesimally smaller than the 2000 population of Gore states. Bush would have maintained an electoral college lead based on the number of states that Bush won even if the House were expanded by 1000s.

[muon2]

New York was 89 people away from not losing any seats?

What.

I guess when those people were declaring "I'm leaving New York!" they actually meant leaving Manhattan for Westchester or LI.

Or barely anyone other than a few self-important pundits actually left cities?

Anyway, this is good but CA losing while so many other places don't is just disgusting.

Oh there were definitely people who left cities, just 1) not as much as the media portrayed it, and 2) not as far from major cities as the media also portrayed--people moved from Manhattan to Jersey City/Westchester, or from DC to Arlington/Alexandria

The answer was incorrect in terms of the intent of the question. By my calculation NY needed 3,056 more people to overtake MN. The spread in the proportional value for the seat was less than 100. I'll post the bubble seats with their proportional value shortly so you can judge how close states were to the threshold.

I think
89 is the correct answer.

Quotient for Minnesota is 5,709,752 / sqrt (7* = 762998

New York would need a population of 762998 * sqrt (26*27) = 20,215,840

New York change needed is 20,215,840 - 20,215,751 = 89

In the media focus on NY ending up 89 people short, they miss the fact that had MN counted 26 fewer people they would have lost the seat to NY. The asymmetry of the differences is due to the size of sqrt(26*27) in NY compared to sqrt(7* in MN.

[Kevinstat]

New York was 89 people away from not losing any seats?

What.

I guess when those people were declaring "I'm leaving New York!" they actually meant leaving Manhattan for Westchester or LI.

Or barely anyone other than a few self-important pundits actually left cities?

Anyway, this is good but CA losing while so many other places don't is just disgusting.

Oh there were definitely people who left cities, just 1) not as much as the media portrayed it, and 2) not as far from major cities as the media also portrayed--people moved from Manhattan to Jersey City/Westchester, or from DC to Arlington/Alexandria

The answer was incorrect in terms of the intent of the question. By my calculation NY needed 3,056 more people to overtake MN. The spread in the proportional value for the seat was less than 100. I'll post the bubble seats with their proportional value shortly so you can judge how close states were to the threshold.

I think
89 is the correct answer.

Quotient for Minnesota is 5,709,752 / sqrt (7* = 762998

New York would need a population of 762998 * sqrt (26*27) = 20,215,840

New York change needed is 20,215,840 - 20,215,751 = 89

In the media focus on NY ending up 89 people short, they miss the fact that had MN counted 26 fewer people they would have lost the seat to NY. The asymmetry of the differences is due to the size of sqrt(26*27) in NY compared to sqrt(7* in MN.

Kudos for mentioning that. I noticed that last night. NY having 18 more people and MN having 20 fewer (so 18 people who moved from NY to MN IRL didn't, and two others moved somewhere else instead) would also have done the trick. It might be easier to say just 20 people being "moved" from MN to NY. Of course I'd think of those two cases as being a 38- or 40-person combined difference, so MN losing 26 is definitely the smallest case. Well, that and MN losing 25 people and NY gaining 1. That would cause NY to get the final seat also.

If the Census Bureau wanted to be really cool, they would adjust their Table B2 on their 2020 Apportionment Results page (PDF of table here) to list the state just scraping a last seat after each census and how many fewer people in that state would cause a seat to shift. But that might be a confusing table. There may be a natural tendency to focus on the state that just missed out and what would have needed to change in that state (rather than some other state).

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

What are the longest current streaks for losing a seat in reapportionment?

[Kevinstat]

I am almost certain that Webster's method would flip the seat from Minnesota to New York.

Actually, under Webster's method (or rather Major Fractions as used in 1910 and 1930, having a fixed House size rather than having a fixed ratio as was done in the beginning of our country's history (with a largest remainder method with a bunch of paradoxes in between fixed ratio and fixed House size divisor methods)), Minnesota would still have 8 seats but seats would have "moved" from Montana and Rhode Island to New York and Ohio.  Minnesota would have lost a seat under the Harmonic Mean ("Dean") divisor method to Idaho (which would have gained a 3rd seat), interestingly enough.

There is probably a value of p in the generalized or power mean between 0 (geometric mean; equal proportions) and 1 (arithmetic mean; major fractions) that would just flip a seat from Minnesota to New York, but I haven't tested that yet.  Montana got the second-to-last seat IRL so I can't be sure it wouldn't lose one before Minnesota without checking.

[beesley]

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but if there was a significant Hispanic undercount, would it have affected Mexican/Central American Americans more than groups like Cuban Americans?

[muon2]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

That was common practice in the 19th century. I did a thread about what would have happened had the practice been codified and 435 was never fixed as the number of seats. I've just posted an update for that thread with the effect of the 2020 Census.

With the release of the 2020 apportionment populations I can continue the series. In this timeline the 1929 act never happened to lock in 435 members in the House, but instead codified what had been common practice since the Civil War. Initially no state could lose a seat due to reapportionment, but that was modified by the 1947 Act such that no state that gains population over the decade can lose seats. In 2010 the total in the House was 1140 members.

In the 2020 Census IL, MS and WV lost population and both IL and WV lose a seat as OH is the last to be brought up to their status quo. VT and WY remain with 2 seats, so DC continues to get 4 electors. There are now 1193 members in the House and the average district has 278 K inhabitants.

[StateBoiler]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

That was common practice in the 19th century. I did a thread about what would have happened had the practice been codified and 435 was never fixed as the number of seats. I've just posted an update for that thread with the effect of the 2020 Census.

With the release of the 2020 apportionment populations I can continue the series. In this timeline the 1929 act never happened to lock in 435 members in the House, but instead codified what had been common practice since the Civil War. Initially no state could lose a seat due to reapportionment, but that was modified by the 1947 Act such that no state that gains population over the decade can lose seats. In 2010 the total in the House was 1140 members.

In the 2020 Census IL, MS and WV lost population and both IL and WV lose a seat as OH is the last to be brought up to their status quo. VT and WY remain with 2 seats, so DC continues to get 4 electors. There are now 1193 members in the House and the average district has 278 K inhabitants.

On the flipside of this, do you want 1200 members of the House? The House has become so incredibly centralized in power in each party that there's only about 30 to 40 people in the House total where their opinion matters (and with the removal of power from Committee chairs the past few decades in favor of party leadership, you can argue it's even less), so from a purely legislating point of view, increasing the size of the House from 435 to 1193, you're adding 758 backbenchers that are only going to vote as their leadership tells them to.

[muon2]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

That was common practice in the 19th century. I did a thread about what would have happened had the practice been codified and 435 was never fixed as the number of seats. I've just posted an update for that thread with the effect of the 2020 Census.

With the release of the 2020 apportionment populations I can continue the series. In this timeline the 1929 act never happened to lock in 435 members in the House, but instead codified what had been common practice since the Civil War. Initially no state could lose a seat due to reapportionment, but that was modified by the 1947 Act such that no state that gains population over the decade can lose seats. In 2010 the total in the House was 1140 members.

In the 2020 Census IL, MS and WV lost population and both IL and WV lose a seat as OH is the last to be brought up to their status quo. VT and WY remain with 2 seats, so DC continues to get 4 electors. There are now 1193 members in the House and the average district has 278 K inhabitants.

On the flipside of this, do you want 1200 members of the House? The House has become so incredibly centralized in power in each party that there's only about 30 to 40 people in the House total where their opinion matters (and with the removal of power from Committee chairs the past few decades in favor of party leadership, you can argue it's even less), so from a purely legislating point of view, increasing the size of the House from 435 to 1193, you're adding 758 backbenchers that are only going to vote as their leadership tells them to.

OTOH a smaller constituency makes it easier to vote the district and not the party. That's especially true if anti-gerrymandering laws keep district lines from carving up identifiable communities and piecing together distant fragments. That would make it easier for a representative to be known as an individual and not merely as a label. That in turn could lead to more independent and perhaps third party representatives.

I'm also of the opinion that we are on a swing of the polarization pendulum toward one extreme, much as 60 years ago was at the opposite extreme of depolarization between the major parties. I wouldn't want to design an electoral system that locks in the idea of how parties operate in any one decade.

[MillennialModerate]

2020 election with 2020 reapportionment numbers:
303 D - 236 R

2016:
231 D - 307 R

2012:
329 D - 209 R

2008:
357 D - 181 R

2004:
242 D - 296 R

2000:
249 D - 289 R

1996:
364 D - 174 R

1992:
353 D - 185 R

Ignored F*ithless electors.

That can’t be right. The 271-267 Bush/Gore race would be a 40 EV win for Bush?!

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

2020 election with 2020 reapportionment numbers:
303 D - 236 R

2016:
231 D - 307 R

2012:
329 D - 209 R

2008:
357 D - 181 R

2004:
242 D - 296 R

2000:
249 D - 289 R

1996:
364 D - 174 R

1992:
353 D - 185 R

Ignored F*ithless electors.

That can’t be right. The 271-267 Bush/Gore race would be a 40 EV win for Bush?!

https://www.270towin.com/maps/2ejgW