What the Early Census Numbers Mean for New York and for National Politics

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Can the results of a census be appealed? Can there be a recount like in a post-election, or videotape replay like in sports? Governor Cuomo wants to try.

Governor Andrew Cuomo: Look, you had a lot going on, you had people who were nervous to come forward. You have undocumented people who are nervous to come forward. I do believe the federal government had a chilling effect.

Brian: The 2020 census count as it was released on Monday and currently stands will mean New York State loses one seat in the house of representatives. Other Northeast and Midwest Rust Belt states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois, so will West Virginia, so will California. New Jersey will stand pat. Florida and North Carolina will gain one and Texas will gain two seats. It's not just about the Sunbelt. Also, gaining a seat, the more northern and western states of Oregon, Montana, and Colorado. North Carolina will also gain a seat, each seat in Congress is also one electoral vote for president so it's a political double dip.

In New York's case, it would not have lost the seat if just 89 more people have been counted in the census. Mayor de Blasio is blaming poor outreach by Cuomo for that narrow loss. Cuomo is blaming Trump for scaring away Latinos from filling out the forms.

Governor Cuomo: Do I think it was accurate to within 89? No. We're looking at legal options because when you're talking about 89, that could be a minor mistake in counting.

Brian: Cuomo might get that day in court for New York, but other people are asking what if Cuomo hadn't transferred all those COVID patients from hospitals back to nursing homes, maybe 89 more people would have lived past April 1st census day, and been counted. Ready to geek out on more numbers? The total US population was counted at 328 million, up around 22 million from a decade ago. Rounding to the nearest million, California has 40 million people the biggest state up by two million. Texas has 29 million people up by four million, a much bigger percentage increase than California, that's why Texas gain two seats in California last one, but they're both growing.

Same with the next two biggest states Florida has 21 million people now according to the new census, up by three million. New York is right behind Florida at 20 million people, but it gained a little less than one million in the last decade, while Florida gained that three, so Florida gained a seat in New York lost one. Upstate downstate has not been released officially for New York, but according to census data from two years ago, downstate New York meaning New York City in the immediate suburban counties had gained about 250,000 people since 2010, while upstate had lost about 100,000.

New Jersey's population is nine million, up about half a million no change in seats. Only two states actually lost population. From my reading of the charts. They were Illinois and West Virginia. Puerto Rico also counted in the census though not a state, lost the most people and the biggest percentage of people more than 400,000 people in the last decade, or around 12% of its population left Puerto Rico since 2010. The declines in Illinois and West Virginia, the only two states that lost people were much, much smaller than that.

The Brennan Center for Justice notes the nation's population growth over the past 10 years came entirely from non-white communities in Latino, Black, and Asian American voters collectively account for 80% of the increase in eligible voters between 2010 and 2020. Brennan worries that a portion of seats will still be disproportionately to whiter population areas because of uneven clout in the redistricting process to come. Interesting stuff right?

With all of that as prelude, we welcome Amy Walter, National Editor of the Cook Political Report, and a PBS NewsHour contributor. Many of you see her on their weekly politics Monday segments. Amy always great to have you on. Welcome back.

Amy Walter: Thank you, Brian. Love geeking out on this stuff, so excited.

Brian: What's your headline from all those numbers? How has the United States changed in the last decade?

Amy: I love the census because it does tell the story about the transformation of America every 10 years, where people are moving to, where they're leaving, as you pointed out, what's growing, what's not. Americans moving for opportunity is as old as the country itself and so the opportunities in places like North Carolina, Texas, Florida, this is both about where the jobs are going, especially the "Knowledge based jobs" there was news today or this week, for example, about Apple moving one of its headquarters or opening a new headquarters in North Carolina.

Brian: Oh, I missed that.

Amy: Lots of people moving in, in places like the Research Triangle around Raleigh, Durham, that's where that Apple facility will be. You could see this movement, Brian, as the invention of air conditioning, had more of an impact on our change in moving from north to south, as much as so many other things, but labor practices, and different states, of course, trying to use whatever lure they have to bring different industry from where it had traditionally been based to some of these newer areas.

Southern governors promising more relaxed labor, the right to work states, in other words, that labor unions wouldn't have as much sway in those parts. Anyway, the story for this one is that continuing trend, as you pointed out, upstate New York, continuing to lose population, as well as these other states in the middle of the country that once used to boast of some of the biggest delegations, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, continuing to grow at slower rates than other parts of the country.

In terms of its political story, the raw political power piece of it, on one hand, you look at those and you say, "Well, places like Texas, Florida, still controlled by Republicans, that's pretty good news if you're a Republican party that's looking to try to shore up your political power. At the same time, those states are becoming, especially Texas much more competitive, as is North Carolina, another state that's gaining. Out west, this situation is also very fluid, Colorado used to be considered a swing state, it's now a pretty solidly blue state.

All this movement does a couple of things, it's not just about bringing new people into these states, but it also changes the dynamics within that state and we've seen, for example, over the last 10 or 15 years in Texas, I'd argue that, the success that Texas has had in bringing companies, people to that state for better weather and jobs has also brought a whole bunch of people who have a different political leaning than the traditional republican conservative, and that has come to bear fruit for Democrats in these last couple of elections as they're winning in places in and around Dallas and Houston and San Antonio.

Brian: Atlanta, which of course, is now ground zero

Amy: And Atlanta.

Brian: -and now Georgia national politics.

Amy: Absolutely.

Brian: I noticed that Georgia, though it didn't gain a house seat was one of the few states that gained 10% or more in total population and some of that is people moving from the north. Another factor-- let me invite our listeners, some people are calling in ready. Listeners, any of your observations or questions about the census data released on Monday with Amy Walter, of the Cook Political Report. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. By the way, I love as a geek that you mentioned air conditioning here on this day in New York City where it's supposed to be 87 degrees.

If people don't know what that is, maybe before air conditioning, all those cities that we now call the Rust Belt, Rust Belt because these factories are gone, in the Northeast and the Midwest attracted all those factories and steel and automaking and GE and everything else because South was unbearably hot for too much of the year. With air conditioning, the South became much more attractive than places like Pittsburgh, and Schenectady because the cold winters were suddenly worse than the South's hot summers, which suddenly could be mitigated by air conditioning while the winters were more pleasant and temperate there. I think Tom Wolfe once wrote a whole book about that.

Amy: It's quite remarkable going back to the '20s, they have four congressional districts. As you pointed out, now they are going to have more than-- I think now they're up to 27, 28 congressional districts. That's pretty remarkable boom.

Remember, the other thing that lowered industry down south, textiles, as well as factories was labor, that the governors and legislature said, "Don't worry. We don't have the same protections for workers. We aren't going to allow labor unions here. These are right-to-work states." That was also appealing as people were figuring out where they wanted to headquarter their businesses.

Brian: Can you tell how much of state-to-state migration in the last decade is white flight, and how much it's multi-racial? They didn't release stats like that. I don't know if it's a plan.

Amy: That's right. That's a great, great question. We're going to find out more. Remember, this is just the first tranche of data. The real motherload will come hopefully, by the end of August. That's the data that the state legislators and commissions that draw these congressional and state legislative lines, that's what they use to draw those lines. We'll probably have a better sense there.

You pointed out Atlanta, and one of the fastest-growing areas in the state of Georgia is in these Atlanta suburbs. Much of that is growth that is both in migration, people moving from other places. Not just white folks moving from colder climates, but all kinds of folks moving in. As well as you go in and around the suburbs around Atlanta, there's a very significant AAPI population there. Places around Houston have long had very significant Nigerian, Vietnamese presence, both recent immigrants, but also now we have multi-generational families there.

I think we're going to find that, yes, indeed there has been movement from certain parts of the country to others. It's also people coming into the country, settling, having families, creating communities in those places that then become their own centers for the future.

Brian: Right. After the so-called great migration of African Americans from the south to the north of last century, there is also some significant migration of African Americans from the north to the south, and that's another factor there-

Amy: To the south, exactly.

Brian: -certainly, around Atlanta, and some other places. Before we get to calls, another factor that I want to bring up is that the birth rate is down nationally, I should say, the birth rate, let me be clear. If we're geeking out on stuff that's dense I have to be clear. Another factor is the birth rate is down nationally, but down more in some states than others over the last decade. For example, listen to this. According to New York Times article about California, women there delayed the birth of their first child from age 28 on average a decade ago, to age 31 on average now. Three years is a lot of change over just one decade for average birth of a first child.

The article cites housing costs, job prospects, and higher education levels as the main reason. Another way to look at the numbers says the Times is births per 100,000 women. Nationally, that rate fell by about six births per 100,000 women. In California, it fell by twice that much or about 12 births fewer per 100,000 women. Amy, I find that so interesting. I don't have the fertility rates for other states. We can probably guess that something similar happened in New York.

Amy: That's probably fair. It also goes to the debate about immigration, which is that left to America's own devices, if you closed down all access to this country by anybody who wasn't born here, you can see that this will be an unsustainable course because the birth rate could not keep up with what we need to keep, for example, our current safety net programs in place.

Brian: Yes.

Amy: Social Security, Medicare, all funded by generations coming up, workforce again. We know that you need a new generation to come in and do all these jobs that we're creating. When you can have a dispassionate conversation about just the data and say, "Look, if it is up to just birth rate alone, if we just look at that, and don't have any in-migration from outside of this country, here's the path that we're on." That's not a particularly good path to have a graying population without enough new, younger people coming in." Unfortunately, that conversation is one that we are not allowed to have because it gets immediately politicized and we get into battles about border security and there we go.

Brian: And immigrants taking people's jobs.

Amy: Correct.

Brian: I'm so glad you brought this up. I was going to bring it up too. This is something we have talked about on the show over the years. It in a way amazes me from a political standpoint, that the pro-immigration forces don't center this conversation more than it does. Just to repeat what you were saying. The question could be, "Should the country have immigration at large scale levels? Should we base this debate less on whether immigrants take jobs from people born here rather than or at least to also include this huge piece, how much immigrants contribute to the ratio between workers and retirees?" Right?

Amy: Right.

Brian: The funding Social Security, so it doesn't run out of money piece. The ratio between workers and retirees because immigrants are younger, and immigrants tend to have more kids. Those things seem like powerful, long-term economic arguments for large-scale immigration. Why do you as a political analysts think we don't hear it much more than we do?

Amy: I think you know a couple of those reasons, Brian. One is because we get into a conversation about race and who's a proper immigrant and who's not a "proper immigrant."

Then we get into the debate about welfare programs. When you talk to folks, some of it is about a security or taking people's jobs, economic security question. A lot of the pushback that you hear about immigration is that these are folks who are coming here and they are only coming here to take from us. They're going to take public school funding. They're going to take other safety net programs, welfare, food stamps. The focus has been so much on what they're taking from rather than what they're giving to and this idea that they're free riders and their freeloaders. That conversation is a very powerful one and it is a challenge sort of pushback.

Yes, you look at a country like Japan, their very strict immigration policies country. If you look at the pyramid, the pyramid is supposed to be actually inverted. This is a healthy population. The older population should be much, much smaller than the up-and-coming younger population, that's completely flipped on its head in a country like Japan where they're struggling to figure out how to keep the economy dynamic without having people coming into the country who were not Japanese citizens.

Brian: Some of Western Europe too, lower immigration rates in recent decades than the United States. They have more pressure on their safety net programs, particularly their retiree programs than we do in this country. My political curiosity-- I should ask some immigration advocates because it seems that the advocates center that less than they do the right to unify with your family or the right to flee bad conditions in countries that have really bad conditions than they make this economic argument in this particular way. More of that on another show.

We're going to take a short break and continue with so much more census talk with Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report and interesting observations on the phones too. We'll start in with you right after this.

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Brian Lehrer, WNYC, with Amy Walter, National Editor of the Cook Political Report and a PBS NewsHour contributor. She's on their weekly politics Monday segments, as we break down the many interesting and consequential things from the 2020 census numbers, the top line state by state numbers released on Monday. Jeffery in Brooklyn, who was a census worker this summer, or last summer. Jeffrey, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Jeffrey: Good morning. Hi, thanks for taking my call. Again, I worked for the census this summer. I'm in Park Slope. I'm not sure exactly how the census adapted for things. I know that there were 89 people too short. The two areas-- Well, first of all, in Park Slope, many people were away this summer because of COVID. A number of people were actually able to work and tell me if people weren't home and how many people were there. That's one of the things that Census asked us to do.

Then, the other issue was-- I also was assigned to Borough Park. In Borough Park, very few people would speak with me, the Hasidic Jews. I'm Jewish too, reformed Jewish. I knew not to go down on Shabbat and Saturday mornings. Again, I would wear white shirt and look Jewish where many other people would go down there and I don't even think they would be looked at. Anyway, I'm sure The Census did something to adapt, but it's part of the whole point about working on The Census and working around trying to find those 89 people.

Brian: Jeffrey, thank you very much. I get it. Amy, the census is based on where you lived on April 1st, 2020. That was a weird moment in time because people were changing their whereabouts because of the pandemic. I think people had left New York City and San Francisco more than anywhere else out of COVID fears, at least temporarily. Is there any indication that people who really lived in New York City, for example, listed their address as from a different state on April 1st and that made the census inaccurate just enough to cost New York a seat in Congress and in the electoral college that it didn't really deserve to lose?

Amy: These are all really good questions that I don't know we're ever going to get the answer to. Quite frankly, if you're Florida or Texas or Arizona, you also are asking a lot of questions likely because these are states that were expected to gain more seats. Texas was supposed to get three, or that was the projection. Florida, two. Arizona, one. If you've been to Arizona, you know the growth there is just completely bonkers anywhere in and around Phoenix. There has been a lot of discussion about the fact that those are also three states that have significant Latino population and that there was either an undercount or people did not participate in the same way.

Think about also the workers. I appreciate the census worker's story from New York. You've also got folks who were in California or other places in the country that were hit by acts of nature. We had wildfires, we had hurricanes, which displaced people. All of this at a time where people aren't feeling comfortable or confident going and doing the door to door work that you would do in a normal census year. It is clear that this was an unprecedented time to try to hold a census in the middle of the pandemic and then put everything else on top of it, the politics, the ravaging forces of nature. Well, here we are

Brian: Here we are. Lou on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lou.

Lou: Good morning, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. Good morning to our guest. My question is more of a wish list than a question. Here it is. Right now, it seems to me like the electorate is on one spectrum. The leadership of the Republican is one spectrum. For instance, most of the electorate, the people who vote for them, they want clean water, clean environment, schools, roads, bridges, all these premium.

Even though they cost money, but this is taxpayer money. To me, it seems like if the Republican continue to go the way they're going by not going by the way with their electorate, I think the time is going to come when they become very, very powerless and therefore insignificant. My wish list actually is for them to dissolve or maybe get so weak that they don't get powerful for a very, very long time. What do you think going to happen if they continue to go the way they are?

Brian: Before Amy answers that question with her much deeper political knowledge on the national scene than I have. Lou, I'm just curious-- I know from your previous calls, you're an immigrant from Liberia. Did you get any sense among other people in that community in 2020 that they were reluctant to fill out their census because of immigration status fears based on Trump's rhetoric?

Lou: I personally know three people who are still going through the immigration process. They weren't sure so they didn't answer the census. Other than that, most of us did. Most of us we did it in our community centres and our churches.

Brian: Got you, Lou. Thank you very much. Amy, what about his question for long-term Republican prospects in terms of anything new you can glean from the census data? We see Lou wants the arrow to point straight down.

Amy: [chuckles] In terms of the success for the party. Look, the thing about the census is, again, especially at this point where we just have these big raw numbers, we don't have any of the great granular data that we're going to get soon is just telling us a broader story of states that are growing faster or slower. It doesn't really tell us that much about the politics. The bigger fight, as we know in these next few months, is going to be the fight over drawing the lines.

We're talking about Republican prospects there. I think one of the under-reported stories from 2020 or one that didn't get as much attention was the fact that Republicans actually did quite well at the state legislative level in the 2020 election, especially in these battleground states like Texas, like Arizona, like North Carolina, like Georgia. Specifically, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Republicans control the entire process.

That gives them incredible opportunity to draw more Republican districts or safer districts than if this would have been a process where Democrats had a seat at the table. Just nationally big-picture-wise, Republicans come into redistricting with twice as many-- They have the power right now to draw twice as many congressional districts as Democrats do nationally. That is a pretty powerful tool politically, again, short term.

Now, what we also know is these fights beyond the fact that they've become much more public, the line drawing has become much more transparent. There's a lot more focus on this in the media, but it's becoming much more litigious as well. I expect to see many of these maps whenever they're drawn, there'll be a lawsuit instantly filed either by Democrats or by Republicans. It will go through the courts.

We may see a state map change two or three times over the course of the last 10 years. Just to put a button on this, to me, what the most fascinating thing about watching the country or specific state over the 10 years, once the lines are drawn, and then watching those states move politically for 10 years. You can see places in the state where Democrats are getting stronger and places where Republicans are getting stronger.

Atlanta was such a great place to watch because it wasn't that long ago. It was in 2012 when those Atlanta suburbs, which had been drawn by Republicans to be safe Republican districts, were performing the way they were drawn to perform. Mitt Romney won those easily. Only four years later that Hillary Clinton went on to win those districts, and then Joe Biden crushed in those districts as did Stacey Abrams.

Yes, these are lines that are drawn for 10 years, but just to remember that many of them get redrawn because of lawsuits, so the courts get involved and the second is population shift within states a lot over 10 years. You can not guarantee that the lines that are drawn this year are going to be the same kinds of districts they were drawn to be in a few years from now.

Brian: That's also interesting. When they release the next-level data in August or September, we'll find out more about some of that internal movement from state-to-state and within states, as you say, that are affecting who gets to be in different congressional districts, but I want to cycle back to something that you said at the beginning of that answer, it's one of the biggest political stories of the last 10 years since the 2010 census that I think a lot of people miss. We've talked about it on this show for 10 years now, and that is the big backlash against Obama in the 2010 midterm elections.

People do talk about how he lost both houses of Congress in that election. They talk less about how that Tea Party movement also took so many state legislatures in 2010. It's those state legislatures, as you were just describing that have the power to draw the district lines especially for Congress and that determines this over-representation that I think even the last caller Lou in Staten Island was referring to where Republicans have disproportionate power in Congress compared to their population in the country.

That's not only because of the Senate, we always talk about the Senate. The small white rural states get two senators, just like the huge diverse states. Republicans get overrepresented in the Senate, but also in the House, because the Republicans controlled so many State Houses after the 2010 census, they were able to draw district lines that gave Republicans more clout in the House of Representatives than their actual percentage of a population in the country. On this, let's take another caller James in the Bronx. James, you are on WNYC. Hi, there.

James: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I had a question that directly relates back to this challenge of gerrymandering and the issue of fair elections. I was particularly paying attention to the FiveThirtyEight podcasts around gerrymandering in Arizona and North Carolina. I'm very concerned about, particularly in these red states that gained congressional seats in Texas and North Carolina, whether or not these very Republican state legislatures are going to make these fair competitive districts or automatically gerrymander them into Republican-held districts. Thank you.

Brian: Thank you. Amy

Amy: Okay. First I love that you listened to that FiveThirtyEight podcast. I'll put a pitch in for it too. It was a fantastic series that FiveThirtyEight did. It really digging deep into what it means to do redistricting and what constitutes fair. Arizona is one of those states that has an independent redistricting. Theoretically, that should take the politics out of the process.

You have independent people. This is not drawn by the legislature. These are going to make the fairest maps possible, but my definition of fair and your definition fair, Brian, are going to be very different simply because we-- Or competitive, it could be very different depending on where we're from, who we believe has been underrepresented and it makes it really, really challenging.

Texas is really interesting. In fact, what I think could be the best opportunity for Republicans would be to shore up the areas of the state where you could see they were starting to lose vote share, as the suburbs in and around these big city, big Metro areas, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin they were drawn to be Republican. They were pretty Republican.

They've gotten much more Democratic over the last 10 years. Turning those districts, making those districts safer for Republicans, it may not gain them many seats, but it will help protect their seats that are now vulnerable from flipping. Every year legislators have a choice and they can either try to max out their map, gerrymander as much as they possibly can to squeeze out every possible opportunity. Now, that also usually invites lawsuits. There's a risk in doing that.

The bigger risk is that a court draws your map and the court is likely to draw a map that is not as partisan. This happened to Republicans in Pennsylvania, Democrats benefited greatly from a court-drawn map or you can play it too safe. This is where Democrats are going to be in for. This will be a fascinating conversation as we get deeper into this.

New York is a great example of this. New York has an independent commission for the first time, but that commission findings, the lines that they draw can be overridden or rejected by the legislature, which is Democratic of course. Do Democrats nationally put pressure on those in the state to say, "Hey, look what Republicans are doing in Texas, look what they're doing in North Carolina, look what they're doing in Georgia?

You guys got to do as much as you can to draw as many good Democratic districts or draw out as many Republicans as you possibly can, even though that's clearly gerrymandering, but it's gerrymandering for the 'right reason.'" This puts a lot of pressure I think on some of those states. Oregon's another one where the legislators in Oregon, it's a democratic-controlled legislature, but Republicans were being recalcitrant about sitting down at the table.

Democrats said, "Okay, fine, we're going to give you guys an equal say in drawing these maps," and that could cost Democrats a seat in Oregon because Democrats decided, "All right, we're going to give you guys an opportunity here, give the other side an opportunity." Every one of those decisions and every one of those states, especially when you're talking about a Congress that is divided now, we only have a five-seat difference is incredibly important and consequential.

Brian: That's also interesting. I will recommend people to an article by one of your colleagues on the Cook Political Report, that's all about how it's at least as important where the new lines get drawn within states as it is, which states gained seats and which states lost seats in Congress because of the census. Last question, can states or interest groups appeal the count or sue over an alleged undercount of Latinos or anyone else in court? The clips of Governor Cuomo that we played at the top said he might want to go to court.

Amy: I don't know how you do that. As I said, I do think where you're going to get more of the impact will be the states as they draw the maps, how many of those maps are-- Once they get under the microscope that outside groups sue.

Brian: It's within the states [crosstalk]

Amy: Yes, within the states because I honestly don't know what kind of powering we would have to do that to audit the census. Again, it would drag a process out that is already so late. Remember this hurts incumbents too, if you're an incumbent right now, thinking about running for Congress or a challenger, you think, "Oh, I want to run for Congress next year, or the state legislature."

They don't have a lot of time. They're not going to get this data till the end of August as it is. They don't have much time between now and when the filing deadlines are in some of these states to start getting those lines drawn. The further you push it back, the more challenging it is to actually get new lines drawn, and then you have a real mess on your hands.

Brian: Amy Walter, National Editor of the Cook Political Report, and a PBS NewsHour contributor. She's on their weekly politics Monday segments. Amy, thank you for all the knowledge and all the conversation.

Amy: Thank you so much, Brian. This was a lot of fun.

 

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