Thursday, January 2, 2020

Wisconsin won't lose a House member after 2020, but district maps might still be very different

As the US Census Bureau released their estimates of state population last week, Election Data Services followed with their annual projections of how many seats in the House of Representatives that each state would get after the 2020 Census comes out. And you'll see that Wisconsin is one of the rare Midwestern states that would NOT lose a House member, if current trends hold up.
Using any methodology, the population projections points toward a ten (10) seat change over 17 states across the nation by year 2020. States that will gain single seats include Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon, while Florida is set to gain two congressional districts and Texas would gain three seats. Single seat losses will again occur in the Midwest and Northeast sections of the nation, where Alabama, California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia would each lose a seat. All other states would keep the same number of representatives they were awarded in December 2010 when the official 2010 Census numbers were released.

“But wait Jake, didn’t you just post a few days ago about how Minnesota gained 200,000 more people than Wisconsin has in the 2010s? So how can they lose a seat in Congress while Wisconsin stays at 8?

It comes down to a formula that lines up the states overall by population, and then gives away the seat based on that formula (it’s based on a geometric mean calculation that seems to based on the number of people per seat). It wouldn’t make sense for a state with more population to lose a seat before a state that has less population, and despite the fact that Minnesota is gaining more people this decade, it’s not enough to catch Wisconsin by 2020.

The state that might catch us in the next Census is Colorado, if they keep gaining 80,000 people a year while Wisconsin gains less than 20,000. And as you see above, they are slated to join Wisconsin in having 8 seats in the House after 2020, because their growth will net them an extra seat.


While the EDS says that Wisconsin’s population would have to be overestimated by over 160,000 for us to lose a House member, we are quite likely to be down to 7 seats after 2030 if our population continues to stagnate in the 2020s like we did during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. So we need to either accept our shrinking profile, or find a way to reverse that trend. And that won't happen with the same old policies that didn't get people to come here in the 2010s.

In addition, we know the Census also means that the districts have to get new boundaries, and if you look at the EDS projections, Wisconsin's 5.833 million people would translate to about 1 House district per 729,000 people people. That's not even 20,000 additional people per House district vs 2010, but that still could mean a major difference when you consider that most of Wisconsin's population growth is limited to a handful of areas, while some other places have fewer people now than they did in 2010.


For example, if you use the Census Bureau's neat tool that breaks down the 2018 population of each House district in America, you can see where most of our state's districts are well off of the state average of around 726,700.

In particular, the Madison-based 2nd district will need to lose around 40,000 people, and Milwaukee County's 4th, East Central's 6th, and the Northwoods' 7th are all going to have to gain between 11,800 and 16,300 Wisconsinites. And both of these gaps will likely grow by the time the districts get drawn next year, if trends hold.

Of course, the population changes within the Census that change House districts are a separate question from who is drawing the lines. The election of Tony Evers is likely to make things fairer in Wisconsin compared to the 2010 maps, as he can veto redistricting plans drawn up by the gerrymandered Wisconsin Legislature, which would throw the issue to the federal courts to (likely) draw compromise maps. Well, unless Robbin' Vos and company try to get away with going around established state practice with a stunt that was shot down when it was last tried in the 1960s.

Better idea - let's give Republicans the boot all over, and make sure that the maps are fairer for the 2020s. Which would be a significant enough loss for WisGOPs in Wisconsin, because many of the demographic and population changes of the 2010s are not on their side.

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