New York is Losing a Seat in Congress Because Its Census Count Was Short By 89 People
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One seat will be taken from New York in the House of Representatives in the decade ahead after the state fell 89 people short of the number required to hold on to it.
The Census Bureau made the announcement on Monday. Minnesota will be the beneficiary of New York’s lackluster population count, narrowly retaining all eight of its House seats.
The House has been composed of 435 representatives since 1912. Members are allocated by states according to population, or 331,449,281 million people according to the latest census. That means each member elected in the next decade should represent an estimated 761,169 people, an increase of more than 7 percent compared to the last census, which was conducted in 2010.
Minnesota — which narrowly survived the loss of a House seat for the second consecutive decade — and New York have each struggled to retain and attract new residents. Income tax burdens — which fall around 10 percent in each state, not including an additional tax in New York City — coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic have provoked many taxpayers to move to places with lower tax burdens, especially Texas and Florida, which don’t have state income taxes.
The change is more likely to be a blow for Democrats than for Republicans. A reduction in Minnesota’s number of House seats would have meant partially merging rural areas where voters have tended to vote more conservatively in recent years, and would have potentially cut out one of the state’s GOP lawmakers. Republicans and Democrats each hold four of the state’s House seats.
New York Democrats, by contrast hold 19 seats. Republicans hold just eight.
Seven House seats will switch among 13 states nationwide after the census. Florida, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon will each gain one seat, while Texas is set to hold two new seats. Aside from New York, the states that will each lose a seat are California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
