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

[Nutmeg]

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

Pennsylvania is the biggest loser, shedding seats after every Census starting with 1930.

New York is in second place, since 1950, followed by Ohio, since 1970. Illinois and Michigan round out the top 5, since 1980.


Looking also at winning streaks:

Florida has gained seats after every Census starting with 1900.

Texas is a distant second place, since 1950.

Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon tie for third place, since 2020.

[MillennialModerate]

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

I think this amount is a bit extreme. But I’d be in favor of an increase of a size that doesn’t require the physical house chamber to be reconstructed. I think maybe a total of 550 seat in the house would be reasonable. That’s an addition of 115 seats. I’m not sure what the breakdown of those seats would be. But that’s a reasonable number. Of course 5 of the 435 should go to new states (1 to DC and 4 to PR)

[MarkD]

The largest and smallest congressional districts, in terms of population:

Delaware-AL: 990,837 -- 30.17% larger than an average district
both districts of Idaho: 920,688 -- 20.96% larger than an average district
both districts of West Virginia: 897,522 -- 17.91% larger than an average district
South Dakota-AL: 887,770 -- 16.63% larger than an average district
four districts of Utah: 818,813 -- 7.57% larger than an average district

both districts of Montana: 542,703 -- 28.70% smaller than an average district
both districts of Rhode Island: 549,081 -- 27.86% smaller than an average district
Wyoming-AL: 577,719 -- 24.10% smaller than an average district
Vermont-AL: 643,503 -- 15.46% smaller than an average district
three districts of Nebraska: 654,444 -- 14.02% smaller than an average district
both districts of Maine: 681,791 -- 10.43% smaller than an average district
both districts of New Hampshire: 689,545 -- 9.41% smaller than an average district

BTW, the population of an average district is 761,169.
(This is all based on the data that Tender linked in Reply #252 in this thread, and assumes that data is accurate.)

[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.

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.

How many elected representatives are there in state legislatures elected on third-party labels? There's 1 in Wyoming that is a Libertarian.

[Storr]

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

Pennsylvania is the biggest loser, shedding seats after every Census starting with 1930.

New York is in second place, since 1950, followed by Ohio, since 1970. Illinois and Michigan round out the top 5, since 1980.


Looking also at winning streaks:

Florida has gained seats after every Census starting with 1900.

Texas is a distant second place, since 1950.

Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon tie for third place, since 2020.

Until the 2020 census, Arizona was tied with Texas as it had gained at least one seat in every census since 1950. I'm still shocked it didn't gain a seat.

[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.

How many elected representatives are there in state legislatures elected on third-party labels? There's 1 in Wyoming that is a Libertarian.

There are many in state legislatures who act as independents or even as if they were in a different party. There was a recent state rep in IL who voted more like a conservative libertarian than the R label he ran under. Part of the problem is ballot access for anyone other than an R or D in IL. Ballot access for independents and third parties is easier here at local races, and it's not unusual to see an independent slate beat a party in township races.

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

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.

How many elected representatives are there in state legislatures elected on third-party labels? There's 1 in Wyoming that is a Libertarian.

Vermont has (iirc) 7 Progressive Assemblymembers and 2 Progressive Senators. There’s some independents interspersed throughout the country (Alaska has a few, I think; California has one in the Assembly).

On a federal level (based on the quoted map), I could see a few in some of the bigger cities, possibly a Progressive in Vermont, and probably a few independents. You might see a general rise in third parties, if nothing else than in vote share, but I would be shocked if there weren’t at least a few third party members or independents.

[Canis]

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.

How many elected representatives are there in state legislatures elected on third-party labels? There's 1 in Wyoming that is a Libertarian.

There were 2 other Libertarians who came a couple of hundred votes short of being elected in the WY statehouse last year too. Libertarians would be smart to keep looking for Safe R seats that D's leave unopposed and run strong candidates. Wy Shows that Libertarians are capable of beating republicans in very Republican districts as their label is not nearly as toxic as the democratic label their.

[Canis]

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.

How many elected representatives are there in state legislatures elected on third-party labels? There's 1 in Wyoming that is a Libertarian.

Vermont has (iirc) 7 Progressive Assemblymembers and 2 Progressive Senators. There’s some independents interspersed throughout the country (Alaska has a few, I think; California has one in the Assembly).

On a federal level (based on the quoted map), I could see a few in some of the bigger cities, possibly a Progressive in Vermont, and probably a few independents. You might see a general rise in third parties, if nothing else than in vote share, but I would be shocked if there weren’t at least a few third party members or independents.

Yep that's how regional parties and third parties are able to hold power in countries like England and Germany who use FPTP when you have smaller districts third parties have more opportunity to find favorable ground and run strong campaigns. This is why we see third parties elected at the state leg level a very small amount but still at the federal level we only get third-party reps by switches. Id wants to make the senate a mostly ceremonial house and expand the house to 700-1000 seat houses and use RCV for presidential elections. 

[Non Swing Voter]

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?

Most likely.  I bet FL and TX were both undercounted though. 

Good going Republicans!  Making Hispanics afraid to answer the census likely cost you two seats in Congress and 2 electoral votes for a decade.

[cinyc]

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?

Most likely.  I bet FL and TX were both undercounted though.  

Good going Republicans!  Making Hispanics afraid to answer the census likely cost you two seats in Congress and 2 electoral votes for a decade.

This is the standard take, but I think it needs more supporting evidence that it currently has, which we’ll only know when we get the redistricting data.

FL and TX only mildly missed their estimates baselines - both by less than a point, depending on the baseline. MN beat its estimates baseline by about 1 point, AL 2 and NY and RI about 4 points. So the real story may be NY and (especially) RI doing much better than expected more than TX and FL lagging. (PR, HI, NJ and VT were among the other major overachievers).

AZ significantly underperformed its baseline estimate, just as it did in 2010. It’s a serial lagger for some reason.

[Skill and Chance]

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?

Most likely.  I bet FL and TX were both undercounted though.  

Good going Republicans!  Making Hispanics afraid to answer the census likely cost you two seats in Congress and 2 electoral votes for a decade.

This is the standard take, but I think it needs more supporting evidence that it currently has, which we’ll only know when we get the redistricting data.

FL and TX only mildly missed their estimates baselines - both by less than a point, depending on the baseline. MN beat its estimates baseline by about 1 point, AL 2 and NY and RI about 4 points. So the real story may be NY and (especially) RI doing much better than expected more than TX and FL lagging. (PR, HI, NJ and VT were among the other major overachievers).

AZ significantly underperformed its baseline estimate, just as it did in 2010. It’s a serial lagger for some reason.

Hmmm... this makes it seem more like an issue with the estimates missing young Millennial/Gen Z urban hipsters than the census itself missing Sunbelt Hispanics?

[cinyc]

Census put out at least 2 blog posts about the quality of the count that we might find interesting:

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/04/examining-operational-metrics.html

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/04/comparisons-to-benchmarks-as-a-measure-of-quality.html

Some takeaways for the tl;dr crowd:

-65.28% of census addresses were resolved by self-response, vs 61.05% in 2010.
-Only 55.48% of non-response follow up households “were enumerated with a household member; 26.07% were resolved with a proxy respondent, such as a neighbor, building manager or landlord; and 18.44% were enumerated using high-quality administrative records. The use of administrative records was new to the 2020 Census, but the proxy rate is comparable to the 2010 Census, in which 24.71% of occupied households in Nonresponse Followup were enumerated by a neighbor or other knowledgeable person. The proportion enumerated by a household member was 74.88% in 2010.”

In other words, 19% fewer NRFU responses were from a knowledgeable person. Could this have had an effect on the unduplication efforts? Maybe. Census reported a few days ago that there were more duplicates this year than in 2010, and they took additional steps to try to resolve them:

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/04/how_we_unduplicated.html

Any other thoughts from those more knowledgeable than me?

[cinyc]

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?

Most likely.  I bet FL and TX were both undercounted though.  

Good going Republicans!  Making Hispanics afraid to answer the census likely cost you two seats in Congress and 2 electoral votes for a decade.

This is the standard take, but I think it needs more supporting evidence that it currently has, which we’ll only know when we get the redistricting data.

FL and TX only mildly missed their estimates baselines - both by less than a point, depending on the baseline. MN beat its estimates baseline by about 1 point, AL 2 and NY and RI about 4 points. So the real story may be NY and (especially) RI doing much better than expected more than TX and FL lagging. (PR, HI, NJ and VT were among the other major overachievers).

AZ significantly underperformed its baseline estimate, just as it did in 2010. It’s a serial lagger for some reason.

Hmmm... this makes it seem more like an issue with the estimates missing young Millennial/Gen Z urban hipsters than the census itself missing Sunbelt Hispanics?

I think the answer is we don’t know and won’t know until we get the redistricting data or the post-enumeration survey is complete.

[Roll Roons]

I actually wonder if Orthodox Jews had something to do with NY and NJ growing more than expected.

[ultraviolet]

Here's how a Cube Root house would look like, with 692 seats (no map, sorry):

Maine and Nebraska get a little messed up but that doesn’t matter much. Four states don’t gain EVs: WY, VT, RI, MT

[Skill and Chance]

Any ideas why Kansas growth underperformed the other Plains states by so much?  I'm tempted to invoke the oil crash, but even Oklahoma did substantially better than Kansas.

[Tintrlvr]

I actually wonder if Orthodox Jews had something to do with NY and NJ growing more than expected.

Orthodox Jews don't make up even 4% of the population of NY (and Jews generally might not make up 4% of NJ, or at least it's close), so they certainly couldn't make that much of a difference.

[bore]

Delaware is so close to 1 million people. 989,948? Uggghhhh.....

Also, shoutout to Utah for being the state with the highest percentage of population growth in a census for the first time (at 18.4%).

Edit: another random thing I noticed is that the percentage population growth from 2010-20 was 7.4%, the last time the US had population growth that low was in the 1940 Census at....7.3%. That's definitely indicative of just how much United States is aging as a society.

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/population-change-data-table.pdf

Some quick calculations:

331.449*1.074^50=11776
3.271*1.18^50=12846

If these trends hold indefinitely Utah will have more people than all the other states combined in time for the 2520 reapportionment, the implications of which are clear.

What white horse, its hour come at last, slouches towards Washington to be born?

[muon2]

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?

Most likely.  I bet FL and TX were both undercounted though.  

Good going Republicans!  Making Hispanics afraid to answer the census likely cost you two seats in Congress and 2 electoral votes for a decade.

This is the standard take, but I think it needs more supporting evidence that it currently has, which we’ll only know when we get the redistricting data.

FL and TX only mildly missed their estimates baselines - both by less than a point, depending on the baseline. MN beat its estimates baseline by about 1 point, AL 2 and NY and RI about 4 points. So the real story may be NY and (especially) RI doing much better than expected more than TX and FL lagging. (PR, HI, NJ and VT were among the other major overachievers).

AZ significantly underperformed its baseline estimate, just as it did in 2010. It’s a serial lagger for some reason.

Hmmm... this makes it seem more like an issue with the estimates missing young Millennial/Gen Z urban hipsters than the census itself missing Sunbelt Hispanics?

I think another variable that should be considered is state spending on Census activities. Here's a mid-2019 CBPP graph on spending for Complete Count committees, and that was just one aspect.


CA, IL, and NY all made large investments and overperformed estimates. AZ, TX and FL provided minimal support and underperformed. CA had shown how well this works back in the 2000 Census and overperformed despite the negative attacks on immigrants the prior decade in the form of Prop 187. I don't have figures on all state-level Census spending which also included community outreach through non-count organizations and local follow up during the pandemic restrictions. If I find them, I may do some correlation analysis.

[cinyc]

Any ideas why Kansas growth underperformed the other Plains states by so much?  I'm tempted to invoke the oil crash, but even Oklahoma did substantially better than Kansas.

Kansas was always expected to underperform compared to the other Plains states. It actually beat its estimate expectations by 0.8 points or so. NE beat estimate expectations by 1.3 points or so. OK actually slightly missed estimate expectations.

[Brittain33]

I actually wonder if Orthodox Jews had something to do with NY and NJ growing more than expected.

If they had underreported in the past, possibly a bit, but NJ overperformed by 400,000, and that’s well beyond the scale of unnoticed Hasidic population growth.

[cinyc]

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?

Most likely.  I bet FL and TX were both undercounted though.  

Good going Republicans!  Making Hispanics afraid to answer the census likely cost you two seats in Congress and 2 electoral votes for a decade.

This is the standard take, but I think it needs more supporting evidence that it currently has, which we’ll only know when we get the redistricting data.

FL and TX only mildly missed their estimates baselines - both by less than a point, depending on the baseline. MN beat its estimates baseline by about 1 point, AL 2 and NY and RI about 4 points. So the real story may be NY and (especially) RI doing much better than expected more than TX and FL lagging. (PR, HI, NJ and VT were among the other major overachievers).

AZ significantly underperformed its baseline estimate, just as it did in 2010. It’s a serial lagger for some reason.

Hmmm... this makes it seem more like an issue with the estimates missing young Millennial/Gen Z urban hipsters than the census itself missing Sunbelt Hispanics?

I think another variable that should be considered is state spending on Census activities. Here's a mid-2019 CBPP graph on spending for Complete Count committees, and that was just one aspect.


CA, IL, and NY all made large investments and overperformed estimates. AZ, TX and FL provided minimal support and underperformed. CA had shown how well this works back in the 2000 Census and overperformed despite the negative attacks on immigrants the prior decade in the form of Prop 187. I don't have figures on all state-level Census spending which also included community outreach through non-count organizations and local follow up during the pandemic restrictions. If I find them, I may do some correlation analysis.

I’d love to see the spent $ analysis.

From the map, PR didn’t seem to care and had the highest error rate vs population estimates. VT, too.

[jimrtex]

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.

Extra credit algebra problem:

How many persons would have to move from MN to NY to flip the seat.

If Minnesota would have lost the seat it would illustrate a flaw in Huntington-Hill (and all divisor methods):

A state that had increased its share of the population would have decreased its share of representation.

[danny]

I actually wonder if Orthodox Jews had something to do with NY and NJ growing more than expected.

As has been mentioned, the differences are far too large for Orthodox Jews to be a significant explanation. However, I am expecting some Orthodox areas to see significant adjustments once the full results are in as some of the estimates look low to me.

Lakewood somehow went from 53.8% growth last census to just 14.5% in the 9 years since. Kaser went from 42.5% to just 13.6%. New Square went from 50.2% to 26.2%. Kiryas Joel is the most reasonable going from 53.6% to 32.9%.

Some slowdown isn't unreasonable because some Orthodox moved to nearby towns and villages, but this shouldn't be anywhere near enough to explain the low estimates, especially when you consider the school enrolment numbers.

Then there is the case of Bloomingburg, where 10 years ago there were no Hasidic Jews, but in the last few years Hasidic Jews have been moving in to a new development, and the village now has enough Hasidim that they voted out the entire incumbent village board and mayor. Despite this new population, the estimates went from 420 in 2010 to 412 in 2019.