By Dave Goldiner | New York Daily News
New York — New York could lose three congressional seats in 2030 if the state’s population continues to decline, a new report says.
The Empire State’s House delegation, which is currently made up of mostly Democrats, would be trimmed to 23 seats from the current 26 if people continue to move out of the state at the same rate for the next six-plus years.
New York lost about 101,000 residents in 2023 alone and more than 500,000 since the 2020 count, according to a Census Bureau estimate.
California would also lose four seats if its once booming population keeps dipping.
The big winners would be Texas, where an increasing population could fuel an increase of as many as four seats and Florida, which could pick up three representatives.
It’s far too early to identify any political impact from the projected shifts or which New York districts could be on the chopping block. Leaders in both parties will surely seek to leverage both increases and decreases in delegations to their own benefit.
Ironically, the report comes soon after New York’s highest court ruled that the state should redraw the current congressional map in time for the 2024 vote.
The bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission will try to agree on a compromise map. If they hit a stalemate, the Democratic-controlled state Legislature will draw the lines.
Democrats hope to retake up to four seats that Republicans flipped in the 2022 midterms in New York alone, a boon that could allow them to win control of the House of Representatives.
The 2030 projections are far from certain that the population trends will continue for the next several years.
Some demographers believe a big chunk of the migration out of New York has been related to the wide economic and cultural impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which may fade in the second half of the decade.
The rise of remote work has also allowed workers more flexibility to leave more expensive states like New York and California without switching jobs. But those trends could also be fleeting or shift in unpredictable ways.
New York was expected to lose at least two seats in the redistricting exercise that all states underwent after the 2020 count.
It wound up only losing one seat, and missed out on keeping the same 27 seats by just 89 people in the count in a photo finish with Minnesota.
Aside from the decline in California, the census report suggests that longstanding internal migration trends are continuing unabated. States in the South and West have generally boasted strong population growth in recent decades while the Northeast and Midwest have seen declines.
The 435 seats in the House are divvied up among the 50 states every 10 years after the census count is finalized.
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