Six states will gain additional seats in the US House of Representatives because of population shifts over the last decade, the US Census Bureau announced on Monday. Seven states will lose one congressional seat.
The US saw a total population growth of 7.4% over the last decade, the second slowest change in US history (the previous slowest was 7.3% from 1930 to 1940). Overall, the total US population was 331,449,281 people on 1 April 2020, the day the Census Bureau uses as a marker to count.
Texas will gain two additional seats in the House, the bureau said on Monday. Colorado, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina and Florida will also gain a congressional seat.
The seven states that will lose a seat are: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Overall, the fastest growing parts of the US were the southern and western portions of the country.
The US constitution requires the federal government to take a census of the population every 10 years. That tally is used to allocate seats in the House and determine how almost $1.5tn in federal dollars are allocated.
The changes in seat counts will also reflect changes to each state’s electoral college votes for the next decade. A state’s electoral college votes are equal to the total number of representatives in Congress.
The shift of seven seats among 13 states was the smallest since 1941, said Ron Jarmin, the acting director of the Census Bureau.
The numbers came as somewhat of a surprise; projections based on population estimates had Texas gaining up to three seats, Florida gaining two and Arizona gaining a seat. Experts projected Alabama Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island could all lose additional seats. Bureau officials acknowledged that difference on Monday, but said repeatedly they were confident in the results and that they were within 1% of the estimated projections in many states.
The officials also revealed how much every census response matters. Had New York state counted just 89 additional people, it would not have lost a congressional seat, bureau officials said on Monday.
Monday’s announcement was an important milestone in the once-a-decade process of redrawing electoral boundaries, which is also required by the constitution. Census officials are expected to deliver redistricting data to states later this year. The entire process has been delayed several months because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced the bureau to push back its work.
Monday’s announcement also came after the Census Bureau, states and civic groups spent years convincing people it was safe to respond to the census during Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump unsuccessfully sought to undermine the count by adding a question asking about citizenship to the survey. When that move was blocked by the supreme court, Trump instructed census officials to come up with redistricting data that only counted citizens. Joe Biden reversed that effort on his first day in office.