Consider This from NPR - New Census Numbers Mean A Political Power Shift For Some States

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

The first set of results from the 2020 census are in, and according to the count, the official population of the United States is 331,449,281.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. When Marines are deployed from North Carolina's Onslow County, Glenn Hargett says you can feel the shift on the streets. It is a lot easier to get around, particularly at five o'clock. Hargett is an assistant manager in Onslow. That's a southern coastal county. The home of Jacksonville, North Carolina, the other Jacksonville, and the home to Camp Lejeune, the largest military amphibious training base for the Marines.

Camp Lejeune is home to some 47,000 service members. But 10 years ago, during the 2010 census, some of them weren't counted as residents of the area. And that's because they were deployed overseas. And the rule at the time was that they were considered residents at the address they gave when they enlisted. Hargett says that may have led to an undercount in that 2010 census that cost North Carolina federal funding, and it made it harder to attract investment. We want businesses to locate here, and they look at our community and see that there's a lot of people that aren't being counted in the census, and they don't take us seriously because that number is smaller than what might be the real number.

It is important that you are counted here. In this video promoting the 2020 census at Camp Lejeune, you can hear things are very different now. It benefits the quality of life of those who come after you, and it helps everyone in the community. It's very easy to respond to the census. For the first time, deployed troops were counted as residents of the bases or ports where they were stationed, including Camp Lejeune. Six states will gain seats in the House of Representatives. And that's just a little context for this announcement on Monday. Montana, North Carolina and Oregon will each gain one seat. North Carolina picked up a seat in the House of Representatives based on the newest census count.

So did Colorado and Florida and Texas. Texas picked up two seats. All states that are also home to multiple military bases. Consider this. The census is much more than a headcount. It determines how much influence states have in Congress and in picking future presidents. The first major results of the 2020 census are here. We'll tell you what they mean for the balance of power in America. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Tuesday, April 27th.

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You can think of Invisibilia kind of like a sonic blacklight. When you switch us on, you will hear surprising and intimate stories. Stories that help you notice things in your world that maybe you didn't see before. Listen to the Invisibilia podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. For a reporter, the census beat is typically kind of dry. But the last three years have been nonstop drama. Lawsuits, political infighting, and delays. So it is a hard-earned moment for NPR correspondent Hansi Lo Wang to say this. We've learned the official population count, according to the 2020 census for the country, is 331,449,281.

That means the population count grew some 7.5% since 2010. That's the second slowest rate of growth in U.S. history. The growth in the number of immigrants in the U.S. has slowed in recent years. And other records show that overall we're seeing fewer births and more deaths in the country. And researchers are going to keep looking at more data to figure out exactly why population growth was so slow this past decade. And yet for some states, their representation practically grew overnight after the Census Bureau crunched the latest numbers. Texas is the big winner here. They picked up two more House seats, as well as the electoral college votes that come with them. The other states that picked up a seat, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina,

and Oregon. And seven states will each lose one seat, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and California, which lost a seat for the first time since it became a state. Now, some states that lost a representative may try to challenge this count in court. And if this sounds like a zero-sum game, well, that's because it is. There's a de facto cap on the number of seats in the House of Representatives, 435. But that wasn't always the case. The thing that really caused the apportionment to get hung up over and over again was the insistence that the House of Representatives could no longer grow any larger. Dan Bauk is a historian at Colgate University.

He says it used to be that the House grew with the U.S. population. Rather than shuffling seats around, they'd add more. That changed after the 1920 census count. Congressional leaders at the time argued for efficiency that the House of Representatives was big enough. And they were running out of room for more representatives, and they didn't want to spend more money. It meant also, though, a sense that the House had already grown too large to have good debates. In 1929, Congress set up an automatic process for reshaping the House after each census,

keeping it at its existing size, 435 seats. And since then, more or less, the number of seats in the House hasn't grown. When I started this research, I have to admit that I hadn't even thought about the fact that those numbers could change. They now seem to be so natural and they seem so fixed. When census officials say it's critically important to count every single person living in the country, they mean it. I mean, New York could have avoided losing a seat in Congress if 89 more people had been counted in that state, which Hansi Lo Wong will explain. I spoke with him and NPR congressional correspondent Sue Davis about all the political ramifications from this census count. Hansi starts out. Well, it's always interesting

to find out which state got the last of the 435 seats for voting members in the House. And this time, it was a remarkably close scramble. During the Census Bureau's press conference, Kristen Kozlap, the Bureau's senior technical expert on 2020 census congressional apportionment, revealed that if one thing turned out differently, New York could have kept the one seat it lost. Let's listen. If New York had had 89 more people, they would have received one more seat instead of the last state that received their last seat. There are 435 seats. So the last seat went to Minnesota and New York was next in line.

So we have another example here for the history books about why the census counts and why every person counts. Sue Davis, politically at stake here, congressional seats and votes in the Electoral College. What do these gains and losses actually look like? Well, in the Electoral College, it certainly had an impact. If you considered that if these had been the state counts in the 2020 election, Biden would have won, but he would have won by three fewer Electoral College votes. Obviously, that wouldn't have changed the 7 million popular vote winning margin. But I think that this is the kind of thing that could fuel Electoral College critics who say it's moving further and further away of reflecting the political will of the country. On the congressional level, it has a huge impact. You know, it does continue this sort of generation long shift we've seen in

shifting the power centers in the country away from the Northeast and the Midwest and into the South and West where people are moving and population is growing. Also think it's important to remember that this isn't just about those 13 states that Hansi mentioned that are going to gain or lose seats. 37 seats aren't going to change their number of House districts, but they all, for the most part, will go through a redistricting process to redraw the lines in their states based on population shifts within the states to reflect where people are living today. This often gets the most ugly audience states that are losing the seats

because they don't really have a lot of options. It essentially means they either have to draw out an incumbent member of Congress, someone has to retire, or they're essentially daring lawmakers to run against each other. I know it's early. Any reaction out of Capitol Hill? Oh, yeah. I mean, this is very closely watched by literally everyone, especially when you look at the House right now and how narrowly it's split between the two parties. They're both trying to gain as big an edge as possible out of this process. Just one example, Montana, it's going from one seat to two.

Senator Steve Daines, he's a Republican. He was out very shortly with a statement saying they need to make sure there's no gerrymandering. We're going to hear a lot about that to keep communities of interest together. This is a state where Democrats could, in theory, have some hope of gaining this new seat, depending on how those lines are drawn. And when you're talking about house margins this narrow, literally every competitive seat is going to matter in 2022. So that's what is at stake. And Hansa, you watched all the twists and turns leading up to this, because it's so high stakes. Numbers delayed because of COVID-19, changes the Trump

administration tried to make, and concerns about accuracy of the data. At this point, what can be said about the reliability of the 2020 census? Well, the Census Bureau's career officials say they're very confident in the accuracy of these new state population numbers. But it's more to keep in mind, it's going to be months before we have substantial indicators of the quality of these results. There are researchers with the American Statistical Association who are doing an independent audit of the Census Bureau's work that we're expecting a report out sometime in June. And in December, it's going to be a while, December, that's when the Bureau will start releasing estimates about how many people may have been missed, as well as rates of overcounting and

undercounting groups by race, ethnicity. And for this census, there are particular concerns that historically undercounted groups, including people of color, immigrants, renters, rural residents, may have been especially undercounted this time around because of the last minute changes the Trump administration made to the census schedule, cutting short counting, and because it was so hard to reach those households that didn't respond by themselves, by filling out a form on their own, by sending out in-person visits, door knockers, those are really impossible to do in the early months of the pandemic. Okay. Looking ahead, Susan Davis, what are the next steps when it comes to redistricting?

Well, now we wait. The census says they're going to release the sort of nitty gritty data that the states will use to actually redraw their congressional and legislative district lines. They're going to do that by August 16th. This is going to be data about population by race, by age and housing. They can literally get down to the neighborhood level. All 50 states have their own way of redrawing their lines. Some use nonpartisan commissions. Other states, it's driven by whichever party runs the legislature. And because of COVID, this is all happening later than usual, releasing this data. So it's going to probably cause some deadline drama, probably going to cause some legal headaches, certainly expect court challenges. And states might have to consider

things like pushing back their candidate filing deadlines and when they plan to hold their primaries for the next election. And Hansi, to you, what happens next with the numbers that we've got? They're part of a handoff process and on their way to Congress and ultimately ends with the clerk of the House of Representatives certifying these numbers and reporting them out to the states. And some states that have lost seats may end up filing lawsuits challenging how these seats were assigned. So this could also get contentious in court before these new House assignments are used for the 2022 midterm elections. NPR correspondent and expert on all things census, Hansi Lo Wang, and NPR's congressional correspondent, Sue Davis. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.