When People Stop Moving, So Do Congressional Seats

From The Wall Street Journal:

Here's something else that's likely to be affected by the recession: voting power on Capitol Hill.

Just a year or two ago, New York seemed set to lose two seats in the House of Representatives after the 2010 census as its retirees fled south. Fast-growing Florida was expected to pick them up, giving each state 27 representatives. And North Carolina, the focus of massive Hispanic immigration, looked poised to add a seat.

But the spreading recession and foreclosure turmoil could change those plans, along with so much else.

Suddenly, Americans are less willing and able to move, and that's likely to have an impact on the Congressional map -- and on the political muscle that some states will have in electing the next three presidents, angling for federal dollars and setting the national agenda.

A single vote isn't an insignificant margin. The House passed the 2003 prescription drug plan by just one vote.

Now, swing-state Florida is likely to gain just one seat and reliably Democratic New York will lose just one, according to separate projections by Election Data Services, which analyzes population trends for the Democratic Party, and Polidata, which does the same thing for the Republicans.

That will help the Democrats retain their House majority, but New York's Congressional delegation also will have a bigger voice than Florida's in deciding how Congress divides up billions of dollars in economic stimulus funds.

Texas, a reliably Republican state, now will get four new seats, including the seat that North Carolina, another swing state, was expecting. And solidly Democratic California, which was on track to lose a seat for the first time ever, may hold onto it after all.

Americans have historically been willing to move to hot employment markets when jobs contracted at home. But with the current slowdown spreading nationwide and across almost every industry, there aren't many employment hot spots to move to.

Even if there were, falling home prices and the credit crunch have made it nearly impossible for many people to sell their homes or line up a mortgage to buy a new one. The Pew Research Center calculates that only 11.9% of the population changed homes last year, the lowest percentage since the U.S. Census Bureau began asking the question in the 1940s.

At the same time, foreign immigration has slowed as jobs have evaporated. The Census Bureau reported that 1,038,000 immigrants arrived between July 2006 and July 2007. A year later -- and even before the turmoil in the credit and stock markets began last fall -- that dropped to 889,000.

Nevada's growth rate fell by more than one third between July 2007 and July 2008, and Florida's and Arizona's were down by one-fifth. New York, which added 15,000 people between July 2006 and July 2007, grew by four times that many a year later. The same number of babies were born, the same number of people died, but 63,000 fewer New Yorkers moved away.

Many demographers say that Census Day is too soon for those trends to change very much. The population count on April 1, 2010, will be used to apportion the 435 House seats for the next decade and most of the votes in the Electoral College through the 2020 presidential election.

Those allocations won't change until after the 2020 census, even if the economy and immigration quickly pick up steam and Americans resume their wanderlust. That would leave residents of fast-growing states under-represented in the House and those in slow-growth states with an unfair share.

The news may be even worse than it now looks for some states because the Census Bureau's estimates are probably already out of date. Both Election Data Services and Polidata expect Arizona to pick up two seats based on those estimates. But Arizona, one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis, would lose one of those seats if just 48,745 people move away while other state populations remain steady, Election Data Services calculated.

The margins by which other states could gain or lose a seat are even closer. Oregon will pick up its sixth seat with a margin of just 2,558 people. If it doesn't keep those people and Washington picks up 4,431 people above current projections, it will get the seat instead, according to the Election Data Services.

Those potentially tiny margins are likely to add to Congressional scrutiny of the census, with states complaining that undercounts have cost them seats. But the Census Bureau is struggling with technology glitches and lacks a permanent director.

Cash-strapped states, including California, have dropped get-out-the-count efforts that helped census takers find poor, immigrant and transient households in the past, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, who publishes a newsletter on the census.

Record foreclosures and job losses also could leave people uncounted, she added. In a census trial run last year, some people who were behind on their mortgages or were living in foreclosed homes wouldn't open their doors. "They were afraid it was the sheriff," said Ms. Lowenthal.