(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- Republicans are surely celebrating following the release of the 2020 Census.
States that are historically Democratic bordering the Great Lakes are set to lose both electoral votes and congressional seats. The states picking up those votes and seats are ones where Republicans currently hold a distinct advantage.
According to the data released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau, North Carolina, Texas and Florida will gain four congressional seats combined in Congress in 2023. The population growth these states have experienced in the last 10 years has led to the increase in the number of congressional seats.
In addition, these states will collectively gain as many new electoral votes as Hawaii has in total. Those three states voted for former President Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
The counter to that is four states that are led by Democratic governors — and that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 — will lose one congressional seat each. Those states are Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York and Illinois.
Ohio, which typically leans Republican, will also lose one seat in Congress.
While the results of the Census weren’t great for Democrats, it was actually better than some had expected. Certain pundits were predicting that Texas and Florida would potentially gain even more congressional seats and electoral votes than they did.
The shift in congressional seats will all come in the House of Representatives, whose membership breakdown is determined by population. The losses and gains in seats are all in the House. Each state gets two seats in the Senate, regardless of the state population.
This could prove to be very critical in the 2022 midterm elections, where Democrats are hoping to hold onto their very slight majority. Right now, there are seven more Democrats in the House than Republicans.
Of the seven states that lost a seat in the House, five voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Of the seven seats that will be newly created according to the Census data, five are going to states that voted for Trump in 2020.
If those party affiliations hold true going forward, Republicans could regain control of the House, even if they don’t make headway flipping many seats in the 2022 midterms.
The full effect of these shifts won’t really be known for quite a while, though. That’s because state lawmakers have to sift through all the data to then re-draw their congressional districts.
If Pennsylvania loses a seat from a rural, Republican district, for example, it’s possible that the GOP won’t benefit from the Census change. If the district comes from a more urban area near Philadelphia, though, then that could have negative effects for Democrats.
Overall, the United States is growing in terms of population, but at the second slowest rate in its history, according to Census data. The only other decade that saw slower growth than the last 10 years was between 1930 and 1940. That decade was encompassed by the Great Depression.
