Every 10 years, the United States conducts its census to determine population and demographic changes across the country, using those numbers to apportion representation for each state's congressional districts in the House of Representatives.
The state population totals of the 2020 census were released earlier this week, and saw losses in congressional seats for New York, California, Michigan, and other states. Meanwhile, states like Texas and Florida gained seats. How this will reflect in the changing of districts will be left to each state's legislature. Many of the states that saw boosts in population have legislatures controlled by Republicans.
The 2020 census was a hot button issue while being conducted under former President Donald Trump, whose insistence on a citizenship question was widely criticized and ultimately left off the census after the Supreme Court refused to take up the case.
While Republicans gained a small boost over Democrats from the results of the population totals, the party largely underperformed especially in Texas, which gained two seats instead of the three many predicted, with similar developments in Florida and Arizona. All three states have some of the highest Hispanic and Latino populations in the country.
Figures on both sides of the aisle wonder whether Hispanic and Latino Americans were left undercounted as a result of the hubbub surrounding the citizenship question.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who now oversees the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, told the New York Times:
"I just wonder if it had the impact of suppressing the count, especially in the Hispanic community. I'm not sure there's any way to ever prove that or to determine whether or not that's true, but I think that's always something that we're going to be wondering about."
Michael Li, of the Brennan Center's redistricting and voting counsel, speculated the same in a recent tweet specifically regarding Texas.
Many are laying Republican underperformance at Trump's feet.
I don't trust this Census. I am almost certain that Trump's attempts to put a citizenship question and messing with the Census had an effect... It's just another wound he inflicted on our nation, and it pisses me off.
— Charles de Gaulle (@CharlesResis) April 27, 2021
The campaign for a citizenship question hurt Democratic states as well, especially in New York, which was 89 people shy of keeping all of its House seats.
Some say that Trump's antics rendered the census altogether unreliable.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state is looking into legal options to contest its narrow loss of a congressional district.
