I think there is a case for the opposite trend as well - anecdotally I and many others I know moved from NY to another state after responding to the census as a resident of NY. From what I observed (and when I responded) most of the census outreach in NYC was early in 2020 before the pandemic really hit. USPS published some data using change of address information that shows NY lost a good number of residents during 2020, how many of those responded to the census before or after they moved is a toss up though. No conclusion, just adding some context.

Weren’t many places affected by the pandemic and not just NYC? I guess you could argue given their raw numbers it affected them more.

AOC could lose her district and opt to run against Schumer instead of staying in the House. Payback for AOC beating another incumbent Democrat that ends in her beating Schumer for US Senate.

That is the most interesting thing that could happen at least.

I see 89 residents and immediately think less of COVID and more of the Trump administration's effort to scare certain demographics off. The results were tainted by an administration that acted in bad faith.

how does this work for congresspeople already in those seats? does this only take effect next congress?

Red states gaining seats is in no way incompatible with demographic changes. Red states become less red via population growth could fully explain this effect, and seems like a completely plausible explanation.

Also 6 electoral college votes.

Hurricane drove a lot of people away.

https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/research/data-center/resear...

Massively devastating natural events + crappy economy + local governmental corruption + freedom of movement into the US = a lot of people leaving.

Honestly, the fact that even more people don't flee that island for mainland US is a testament to the importance people place on their "homeland".

Hurricane Maria in 2017 must be partially responsible?

Property damage (estimated at $90B) and loss of economic opportunity surely forced many people to move to the mainland.

Everyone is pointing to Hurricane Maria, which is a big factor, but even before that there was a major financial crisis creating substantial misery.

Hurricane Maria was pretty devastating and the lack of Federal aid exacerbated it. I imagine people left after that.

Perfect world, it probably has a jagged split north to south drawing through Great Falls down to Billings/Hardin.

With this year's state legislature and Governor Body-slam; they'll try some stupid ass bs drawing down the rockies along the I15 corridor and splitting the two major dem hubs in the state (Bozeman and Missoula) rendering it set up perfectly for 2 republican representatives from here to eternity.

Probably in much the same way that the seats in the other states will be re-drawn to make them as Blue as possible, so it will not even out, but at least Texas will remain Texas.

That said, given what the Democrats are doing, seats may be entirely inconsequential going forward. This may all be a huge waste of time.

Birthrates are depressed because prime child-rearing ages, (22-35?) are increasingly unable to afford adequate housing and health insurance. Solve those, families will feel more secure and be able to live close to relatives to help out with children, and the issue is much more tractable.

The pandemic was and is horrible, but it didn't take enough lives above the expected death rate to really have an appreciable impact on census data. (I am not a COVID denialist, we had more deaths than expected rates, it is worse than the flu etc. etc.)

Unless you are talking about out-migration from big cities to small cities, but then again I think it could be just as illogical to say "lets base it off of immediate post-pandemic numbers" as I would best a good many people will move _back_ to the big cities.

That is the risk of a point-in-time count. So many external factors. But generally they all cancel one another out, and each point-in-time count has similar but unique circumstances that in the aggregate could have an impact. Just the way these counts are.

For the next 10 years

It's not such an easy decision. Sure if you have more reps, each constituent arguably has more access. The flip side is that they have more access to a less powerful rep. If you had 10,000 people in congress, sure it'd be a lot easier to get in touch with one of them, but 1 person in a group of 10,000 doesn't have much influence, so how much is that interaction really worth?

Even at 435, unless your rep is a senior member with some important committee assignments and they happen to be in the majority party, getting the ear of your rep isn't worth all that much.

This is a terrible idea and let me tell you why.

First, it puts the balance in the house in the hands of the campaign managers for president (or whichever "vote totals" you would prefer to go by) second, it entrenches the 2 party system as a de jure institution. Third, while districts are drawn very much arbitrarily (and in many cases against the interests of the people in them a la gerrymandering) people do have more in common with neighbors than simple party members from the other side of the country. A republican and a democrat in the 6th district have more in common than two republicans, one from Maine and one from Louisiana. Your proposal eliminates representation of community interests and elevates party interest above all else. It also severely damages the check the house can have on the president since whichever party wins the presidency also wins the house.

A better solution is this solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am... thankfully it has already been passed by congress and is awaiting state ratification. It would ensure that each representative represents the same number of people but it would still preserve community interest representation and probably strengthen it and make party interest an afterthought in the house.

This would violate one of the central promises of the union which was that the large populous areas would not be able to dictate to the smaller regions and would instead be forced to compromise with them. We seem poised to start expanding the union again in the coming decades. Imagine how much more difficult it would be to get smaller Mexican states or central American countries to agree to join the union if they believed they would have no say in running their local after doing so.

I understand where you are coming from as the US is so homogenous now thanks to 250 years of interstate population movement that the delineations seem arbitrary and unfair, but they were very distinct separate regions once upon a time and looking forward the regions we hope to bring into our union are more different than the average American than similar so these same protections will be critical to the effort.

I don't think I agree with this. Suppose there were 1 million representatives, each with ~330 constituents. This is untenable, sure, but imagine this were the case. Would a body like that even be capable of having votes on party lines? Would a body like that even be capable of operating as a two party system?

Then, the academic cases, wouldn't a body like that make it more likely to have other parties have a larger role in national politics?

I'd say since the house is supposed to be a democratic institution, the only one in the federal government, making individual members less powerful is a good thing. If the body is supposed to represent the population directly, the less powerful each individual is in the body the less oligarchic that body will be.

Unlike the senate where all the power rests in Joe Manchins hands

Your link says there would be >6000 reps. That's nothing. Just build a very small stadium, with "Yes" and "No" buttons wired to every seat.

The number of representatives makes it hard to fairly apportion the seats. Montana went from 1 representative for 1M people to 2 for 1M, meaning each should represent about 500k people. Meanwhile in my district in NJ over 700k people are represented by one person. It was unfair before, when Montanans had too few representatives, and it is just as unfair now, when they have too many (compared to NJ). More representatives would improve the granularity and make the system (somewhat) fairer.

To be clear, one does not need an amendment to increase the size of the House.

Changing the size of the House can be done through normal legislation after a Census.