Tag Archives: apportionment

Redistricting 2021 — The Numbers

By tmess2 | Published May 1, 2021

On Monday, four days ahead of its latest target date and almost four months behind the statutory date, the Census Bureau released the national and state-level results from the Census including the apportionment numbers that determine how many representatives each get.  As can be expected, there are multiple different tables summarizing the data in different ways for us number geeks.

The bottom line table shows the apportionment population (both those living in the state and those residing overseas — like military personnel — who call that state home), the number of representatives that each state is getting, and the change in representation.   We will get back to the change in a minute, but the big level number is that the apportionment population is slightly over 331 million.  As such, the average size (mean) of each congressional district is just under 761 thousand.  Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming have fewer people than the average congressional district.  While the apportionment formula does not work for calculating the population needed for the first representative, even Wyoming has enough population to be entitled to three-quarters of a representative.

If, D.C. and Puerto Rico were states, Puerto Rico would be just ahead of Utah (which has four representatives) and just behind Connecticut (which has five representatives) and D.C. would be between Vermont and Alaska.  Given that Puerto Rico is only slightly larger than Utah (which was not close to getting a fifth representative and far enough behind Connecticut, Puerto Rico would be due for four representatives.  If  both were states, the five states that would lose a representative would have been Oregon, Colorado, and Montana (all of which gained a seat), California (which lost a seat), and Minnesota (which barely avoided losing a seat).  The chart of priority values that allows us to consider the impact of adding Puerto Rico and D.C. also shows that Minnesota barely held onto its last seat and New York barely lost its seat.  Apparently, given the formula, Minnesota would have lost that seat if it had 24 fewer people, and New York would have kept its seat if it had 89 more people.  (The disparity in numbers is caused by the fact that the two states have different number of seats. Continue Reading...

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Census Watch 2021

By tmess2 | Published December 18, 2020

As folks who have followed this website for a long time know, the decennial census is something that I consider to be a very big deal.  And, while perhaps not as detailed as we did it back in 2011, I am hoping that we will do something as the numbers come out in the spring about what the numbers might mean for our chances at keeping and increasing the Democratic majority in the House.

Redistricting involves two action at the federal level and at the state level.  At the federal level, the results of the census are use to determine how many representatives each state gets (often referred to as apportionment).  At the state level, assuming that a state has more than one representatives, redistricting involves drawing the lines so that each district has roughly the same population (no more than a 5% gap between the largest and smallest district and preferably smaller).   At the current time, of course, we are dealing with actions at the federal level.  The ball only shifts to the state level once apportionment has occurred and the Census Bureau has released the detailed count (breaking population down to census blocks) to each individual state on a rolling basis.

The federal part of the process comes first and involves two steps:  one involving raw data and the other involving the application of a formula to that data.    The first step is the census finalizing its state level population numbers. According to federal law, by January 1, the Census Bureau is supposed to report its numbers to Secretary of Commerce who is to forward those numbers to the president.  Upon receipt of those numbers, the President is to calculate the number of representatives that each state is entitled to and, by January 10,  forward a statement setting forth the population of each state and the number of representatives that each state will have in the next Congress.  The calculation is done by the “method of equal proportions” (one of several mathematical formulas used to “fairly” allocate partial seats). Continue Reading...

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