An analysis of new Census Bureau data gives an early glimpse of how the USA’s legislative map might change after the results of the 2020 census next year.

Every decade, the Census Bureau adjusts the number of seats assigned to each state in the House of Representatives based on changes in its population as measured by the decennial census, in a process called reapportionment. The process also changes the total number of votes that each state has in the Electoral College, which mirrors the size of its congressional delegation, the sum of its number of House seats and two senators.

An analysis by William Frey, chief demographer for the Brookings Institution, is the best guess, given the data available now, of what that future map might look like. The Census Bureau will release the results of the 2020 census next year, and with it, the new state map.

California would lose one of its seats in the House for the first time, bringing it to 52, according to the analysis, reflecting the state’s sluggish growth pattern. Each of the following states would also lose one seat: Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

New York would drop to 26 seats, leaving it with fewer seats than Florida for the first time. Florida would gain two, bringing it to 29 and lifting it to third place in the tally, after California and Texas.

The biggest gains would be mostly in the South and West. Texas would gain three seats, giving it 39, while Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, North Carolina and Montana would each gain one seat.

Mr. Frey used the Bureau’s population estimates, which were released on Tuesday and show population growth from July 2019 to July 2020. He combined them with similar estimates over the last decade, and then applied an algorithm designed to calculate reapportionment by experts at the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center.

In the year that ended July 1, 2020, the United States population grew at its slowest rate since around 1900, when the government began conducting these annual estimates. That was partly an effect of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed thousands of American lives since March. But growth had slowed substantially even before the virus, as fertility rates languished and immigration dwindled.

(Source: New York times)