“Political power in the United States will continue to shift south this decade, as historically Democratic states that border the Great Lakes give up congressional seats and electoral votes to regions where Republicans currently enjoy a political advantage, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Texas, Florida and North Carolina, three states that voted twice for President Donald Trump, are set to gain a combined four additional seats in Congress in 2023 because of population growth, granting them collectively as many new votes in the electoral college for the next presidential election as Democratic-leaning Hawaii has in total.
Republicans will control line-drawing for 187 congressional seats over the coming year, with Democrats controlling 75 seats, while the remaining seats that need to be drawn will be decided by independent commissions or divided governments, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.”
27 thoughts on ““New census numbers shift political power south to Republican strongholds””
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this take is also misleading. A few states went to independent commissions in the interim, and the biggest change is the flip of the NY senate, and the fact that most of the states losing Rep’s are maxed out Republican.
Ohio and MI are close to maxed out for Republicans, and population growth in CO and CA have been in Democratic areas. MN might have a surprise as well for he same reason.
WV has no Democratic Reps and NY could cause 4-5 Republican reps to lose re-election in 2022, as they have no one protecting them.
It is highly unlikely that TX and FL can add all 3 new seats as Republican, as Republican voters would be stretched too thin. Texas will likely add one D and one R seat because of pushback from current officeholders who want their safe districts.
Solid points.
Yes, people are fleeing extremely liberal states like California because they’re just too expensive to live in.
However, they aren’t fleeing because they hate the ideals, they’re fleeing because they can’t afford to live there.
So this notion that this means the GOP is winning is off base. The GOP is being killed by cancer. Texas almost flipped in this year’s elections. How about the next big one with this many more people flooding in from states that do not reflect big red ideals?
This isn’t a big gop win. This is the beginning of the end of these staunch GOP strongholds as their populations are diluted by people from elsewhere who aren’t interested in voting the way native voters always have.
Gerrymandering can’t fix this.
Your thought process is a frequent liberal trope. The truth is liberals & conservatives pose real threats to each other. A major component of the ground the right has gained & the left has given up is because the right has played the fear game… While the left continued to play, & play & play. In complacency & arrogance. The GOP has been busy. Us Dems, asleep at the switch. It’s the age-old tale of the ant & the grasshopper. A tale in which we aren’t the good guy.
The part of the left that refuses to take small steps to demonstrate the case that govt can do some good & meaningfully move the USA in the direction of a better future, cares about taking a symbolic stand to prove their personal virtue more than giving the actual disadvantaged the helping hand they so need. In many cases, this symbolism is needed because many liberals are hypocrites. I don’t exclude myself from this. Liberal until I have real skin in the game.
The map of blue state California looks like the U.S. in miniature. A few populous blue patches in a sea of red. In the red subset, the expected organization of rightist ideology prevails. The red Haves, are a minority. But they have all the might. Still, the blue patches is where the housing crisis lives. Contrary to another opinion voiced here, that problem has nothing to do with progressive policies.
What it does have to do with is there’s no way to tell the difference between left & right homeowners. To a good approximation, home market value trumps ideology. This hypocrisy has real bite because the market is a racist. But doesn’t that make me a racist, too? Yes, it does. See, my mom owns her home. She has property tax. She gets a tax break thanks to Prop 13. That’s not a liberal law. I vote & make sure she votes, whichever way we need to on any measures to keep that tax break. We voted for the partial repeal of Prop 13 to not exempt commercial properties while carrying over the tax break for wildfire victims who lost their exempted home. It was a trade-off. If you’re anti-biz, it’s all good. I’m pro the economy. So I was wishy-washy. But, I’d have voted against it if mom would’ve lost her primary residence exemption. I’m part of the problem.
Namely, the housing shortage is created by NIMBY homeowners maximizing their own home’s market value by fighting new homes in their area. Every area is “their area” to some homeowner. So, no new houses anywhere near the vast majority of jobs. The low end of the market is just as disrupted, as affluent Silicon Valley geeks, empty-handed in the high-end market, snap up all the low-end housing at price-no-object. Low-wage workers are pushed further out. Where the crime rate goes up. Purely as a function of density. Longtime residents can’t see this bigger picture & latch onto the most visible change: brown skins. If we were realio trulio real live progressives, we’d be appalled. Our history’s as good as a Stephen King book.
Many of these geeks choose to live in swanky SF, commuting 50mi to SV on luxury WiFi equipped buses as a company perq. The poor ill-paid worker who has to commute 100mi ea way in heavy traffic, it’s him & his family who finally reach breaking point & move away to resettle in a more affordable locale. Simple probability says even a random relocation in the U.S. would be overwhelmingly likely to land in a red county. Smack dab in the middle of a big swath of red states. Somehow, we progressives just can’t bring ourselves to see the world as it is. We fail to see straight, at our peril.
After I read “liberals and conservatives pose real threats to each other”, I stopped reading. That seems to me to be some kind of extremely false equivalence. At least I take it to be evidence of thinking too muddled to bother with.
Did I miss anything? And I am NOT asking you, MikeP.
Screw you, Roger. “MikeP talks too fast.” If you don’t read it, there are 330M Americans right with you. I don’t know who else would even be interested if you read my posts or not. If you aren’t willing to ask me what you might gain by reading it, well, that answer not being a matter of broad interest, I can suggest a simple & effective tactic: Just skip it & shut up.
FYI, assuming information interests you & so you’re still reading, I wasn’t drawing an equivalence at all. I was pointing out to a fellow liberal who thinks we’re sitting pretty that the GOP remains a grave danger to us. I do mean grave. Since what we want is decent & fair lives for all Americans, indeed for all people, if we lose ground, even not to Trumpers but just to old-fashioned conservatives, to us that will mean lives lost & lives degraded.
OTOH, to them, once again referring to good old-fashioned, conventional, mainstream, small-government conservatives, us making progress by using good governance to good ends sets back their agenda by another mile & another mountain.
Think about it. “Starve the Beast” is not a means to an end. It’s a purpose in its own right. What conservatives want is less government, come hell or high water. Even if it’s true that social good is not achieved by the status quo, that’s still what they want: just the status quo & nothing but. They want us to plug along like we always have done. Especially like back in the good old days. Along with everything else that went down in those times. That’s no coincidence. That’s the whole idea. That’s what starve-the-beast accomplishes. No further end goal is required.
We’re black hats & white hats to one another. Our notions of forward are inimical. That’s how conservatives look at us. To them, it’s war. We’ve seen what that looks like: They already stole the Supreme Court. How many more vital organs do we have to lose before it’s bad enough to put us on our guard?
Do you really expect Person A to read something when you start it out with “Screw you, Person A”? A simple yes or no will suffice.
Honesty MikeP. I like it. Screw Roger and his overeducated pearl clutching
Steverino supports MikeP. Take heed and reconsider your ways. MikeP.
He’s rational, logical, and open minded. You just preach while living off of others tax dollars.
Steverino now demonstrates the mark of a true conservative these days – just making stuff up.
Love when liberals flee their disastrous, homeless ridden, high tax states to live in “no tax”, tough on crime red states. And then, like a virus, they turn that state blue, destroy it, and move onto the next. If they stopped creating high tax shitholes, they’d never have to move. I should know since I live in the shithole created by deblasio. Everyone I know, mostly Dems, have moved to Florida.
That’s a really odd thing to love. What else ya got?
Don’t feed the trolls. 🙂
Seconded.
Red states only skimp on taxes because they’re all on the Federal Government’s tit. A federal government that’s paid for by Blue states.
Of course. It’s the libertarian or conservative philosophy to basically think all their alleged ‘success’ is created by the magical wand of individualism, rather that the accrued collective labor and knowledge built around them.
It’s their way of explaining away inequality, while they utilize other people’s work, other people’s tax dollars, steal, cheat, and manipulate into their own worldview. Then the second they’re left on their own devices, like if you actually made the red states pay their own way, or made the red counties in blue states pay their own way, they collapse by the function of their own arrogance and incompetence.
But oh, it’s ‘their’ money that being taxed, while they strain public resources or utilize the collective knowledge of publicly funded research and technologies to gain it and benefit more than anyone else for those resources being developed and funded – yet don’t want to pay their way in to its value in their life. Shocker there.
I don’t understand your point although the liberals like roger and Adam probably think they do. The rules are the rules. I have succeeded within the confines of the rules. Change the rules and I’ll continue to succeed. Everyone plays their part. Some people are plumbers, some are overeducated useless blowhards, and others simply conquer. I get that my success is at someone else’s expense but that’s the nature of success. It has to come from somewhere. Liberals, for the most people, are the ones who need to handicap people like me in order to geT a small piece of the pie. Sometimes it’s in our best interest to let the liberals win here and there. Keeps them from rioting and looting.
What you call handicap is what everyone else calls pay your own share for your usage of the public domain.
You sure like to utilize public domain, US infrastructure, a open source material created off the backs of others and seem to attribute your own success greater than that. Do me a favor, in whatever position you work in, simply stop utilizing anything open source in your supply chain from the computers, servers, tools, and applications you utilize – or anything with public infrastructure – and get back to me.
One thing I can guarantee is, if you’re not alive tomorrow, the world will keep spinning and you will be replaced. There’s nothing overtly special any single individual does on this earth and provides in value to the rest of the billions that could easily be replaced tomorrow morning.
The collective utilization of labor, infrastructure, and knowledge from governments, researchers, have more to do with any single individual’s alleged ‘success.’
When you have a group that can fit in a small auditorium that contains half of the entire world’s wealth, and those same individuals could disappear off the face of the earth and the would would keep spinning tomorrow, shows the lack of value they really provide to humanity.
For an alleged libertarian who likes to proclaim the value of a free market, its funny how governments themselves that are supposed to represent the populace aren’t allowed to leverage their own infrastructure in taxes on the market. Major companies sure come running to the legal system to rectify their messes, and sure like to wear down the roads, bridges, and infrastructure more than anyone else – but then refuse to pay what it’s worth to them.
Stop using other people’s work and pull yourself up by the bootstraps and we’ll see how far you go. I’m guessing it’s going to be a little bit more difficult if you actually had to do something instead of probably being like every other empty suit and proclaiming how successful you are with empty platitudes, conference calls, and powerpoint presentations all day.
Indy, how have I not paid for the right to use public resources and infrastructure? In all seriousness, I probably paid more taxes last year than Roger or Adam in their entire careers. Who is using who’s infrastructure?
Who’s that infrastructure worth more to? Someone in the top 1% or someone at the bottom?
Pretty sure the guy making $7.25 in an hour isn’t concerned about enforcing Apple’s patents, or making sure the roadways around Amazon warehouses are held up. So I could give a shit less if they’re taxed upwards of 70%. They want to have the privileged to engage in commerce protection under US Law – THEN PAY FOR IT. What it’s worth to THEM for the protection, not a flat $50 patent fee. That’s what the alleged ‘free marker’ is all about, right?
That’s my point – what is it worth to the companies and the wealthy involved. That philosophy sure as hell doesn’t seem to matter to the poor with predatory lending for people trying to live day to day, or big capital investment firms buying up properties to become slum lords over and make sure 80% of some poor sap’s paycheck has to go to utilize shelter on a daily basis.
Love when conservatives take all the public tax money from large liberal cities, or red southern states take large federal handouts and assume it’s some bootstrap effort to have public utilities.
Why don’t we let the large liberal cities keep their state tax dollars and same for the states like California funding ass backwards states like Mississippi and Alabama and then we’ll talk?
Guessing the narrative will change pretty damn quick when it turns out Billy Bob shooting his guns off every weekend in Bumfuck Alabama isn’t actually paying for his county services.
More conservatism – attributing everything to their rugged individualism while the path is paved by everyone around them.
Let New York City state tax dollars stay in NYC and the same for the rest of the states funded by large municipal welfare. Just like the rest of conservatives, steal others work or labor and attribute it to yourself or philosophy – a bunch of total bullshit.
I agree with both of Indy’s post in this thread. Thanks for writing them.
Since the House holds the power of the purse, how about we tie the number of representatives each state gets to how much it contributes to the federal treasury? It don’t really mind that my state (MA) contributes to less enlightened ones, since presumably some of that $ helps people in need, but I wouldn’t feel quite so fleeced.
Get rid of state welfare, corporate welfare, and welfare for families and individuals. You’ll get my vote on all three.
Then accept recidivism and crime as a natural function of the human condition. Because the clear fact is, due to pure genetics and chance, most people are dealt a losing hand from birth. Sorry to say, you actually need other people in life as a part of the system to exist – you can’t constantly say ‘heres $7 an hour, shut up and provide goods and services for me like a robot’ and then not expect crime and poverty conditions to rise when you support these economic levels.
As a product of that system that you support, then accept the fact you’ve endorsed the environment that gives rise to broken homes and criminals. That’s just a historical fact that you have to deal with, that’s a well proven system product of wealth inequity and authoritarianism. Whether someone is getting welfare, or the bodies being cleaned up off the streets, or paying for the authoritarian bullets of ‘protections’ – its a systemic function of humanity. The point would be to utilize the most EFFECTIVE solution, and its been proven its not effective to spend 100 times as much on authoritarian ‘protection’ to prevent social problems as simply just helping them to begin with to prevent the problem.
If your attitude is ‘fuck you, got mine’ on this point, then accept the fact that you would rather spend 20 times as much money on authoritarianism for your false sense of safety, rather than provide those born into a world of hell a fair hand. Countless failed wars, and even the War on Drugs proves that people will spend trillions on weapons and jails to fail at achieving what has been done in other countries providing a minimum standard of living.
Set the equity levels to where they were before trickle down economics. Last I checked, the world existed without Bezos/Musk levels of inequity just fine. Align minimum wage to inflationary standards where it was initially, CEO compensation ratio to where it was at the same time, and higher education costs to where it was at the same time – and then we’ll talk. I don’t recall many of the boomer generation bitching when they got the equivalent of social welfare back then.
But here’s the thing: there’s evidence that in both NC and Texas that that population growth has been Democratic-leaning, so this might not be as positive for Republicans as it seems on its face.
Florida, however, is perpetually FUBAR, so there’s that.