Following the release of apportionment population data in April 2021, each state was allocated a particular number of Congressional representatives. Apportionment populations are slightly different from the standard census population counts, as they consist of “the resident population of the 50 states including overseas federal employees (military and civilian) and their dependents living with them.”
Interestingly enough, there are multiple different ways that seats could be apportioned based on population data, each with various tradeoffs in terms of privileging larger or smaller states. Since 1941, apportionment values have been calculated using the Huntington-Hill method. Generally speaking, the Huntington-Hill method calculates a priority number for each state and a particular seat number (for example Delaware having a 2nd Congressional District and Texas having an 88th Congressional district). These priority numbers are then ranked, and with slight modifications in order depending on the minimum seats required for each state, the remaining number of seats are selected in order.
Because the Huntington-Hill method is somewhat tricky to implement, and calculators employing it appear hard to find, I created a Congressional Apportionment Calculator in Google Sheets that allows you to enter population values for every state, and then to calculate how many Congressional seats would be allocated to every state based off of those figures.
The notebook has been written where cells in blue are editable by any viewer of the document.
The calculator also includes fields to include DC as a state, and to change the minimum and maximum of seats per state, as well as the total number of states. The second tab in the spreadsheet includes two maps, which plot the total number of seats for each state under the modified populations, as well as the difference in seats per state compared with the seats that were actually allocated.
Using the calculator, you can see things like: – How apportionment would have changed if New York’s apportionment population was just 89 people larger – How apportionment would change if DC were counted as a state – How apportionment, and a state’s percentage of all seats would change if Congress was expanded.
Please note: – Unfortunately, Google Sheets does not support including Washington, DC among its state maps. – Changing the minimum seats per state to 0 may result in whacky outputs, particularly because the definition of the method begins with each state being allocated one seat.
Technically speaking, the spreadsheet utilizes a function I wrote in Google Apps script, and was a good chance to practice some Javascript. With some additional time, I could try to add an option for Puerto Rico, and link the results of this analysis with those discussed in an earlier post Counties and Cities with the Most Influence on US Federal Elections.
Note: The analysis discussed in this article can be played with interactively here.
Most Populous American Cities in 2020
According to the 2020 Census, the largest cities in the United States were as follows:
New York, NY – 8.80 million people
Los Angeles, CA – 3.90 million people
Chicago, IL – 2.75 million people
Houston, TX – 2.30 million people
Phoenix, AZ – 1.60 million people
Philadelphia, PA – 1.60 million people
San Antonio, TX – 1.43 million people
San Diego, CA – 1.39 million people
Dallas, TX – 1.30 million people
San Jose, CA – 1.30 million people
Something that is perhaps counterintuitive is that even though these are the ten largest cities in the country, they do not necessarily have the most influence on our nation’s federal elections.
Influence on Federal Elections
The question of influence is essentially if you could be a party boss in a particular city, what city would generally get you the farthest nationally?
This is because “influence” depends up what state a city is in, what percentage of that state’s population is in the city, and how the state fared in congressional reapportionment in terms of people per representative. In a perfectly democratic system, “influence” would be equal to a cities’ percent of nationwide population, but our system is not intended to be perfectly democratic.
Calculating Influence
Calculating “influence” is done by equally-weighting the share of reps across Senatorial, Congressional and Presidential elections. As an example, a state with 2 Senators (out of 100 total), 3 Congressional representatives (out of 435 total) and 5 electoral college electors (out of 538 total) would have an influence of 1.2%. This should make sense as the state has 2% of Senators, .6% of Congressional Representatives, and .9% of electoral college electorates.
(1/3)((2/100) + (3/435) + (5/538)) = ~1.2%
To calculate this for a city, you take the city’s percentage population of the entire state and re-run the calculation using fractional representatives. Intuitively, this says that a city that constitutes 75% of a states’ population “has” 1.5 Senators, whereas a city that is only 10% of a states’ population “has” .2 Senators.
This method is admittedly imperfect, as a city that constituted 75% of a states’ population could probably elect any 2 Senators it wanted to if it voted as a block, and redistricting could in theory keep a city with two representatives from being the majority voting block for any representative , but we’re going with it 🙂
Most Influential American Cities in 2020
When you re-run the numbers on cities (in this case 2020 Census Places), the numbers turn out quite differently.
New York, NY – 1.91% influence (8.80 million people)
Los Angeles, CA – .79% influence (3.90 million people)
Chicago, IL – .67% influence (2.75 million people)
Houston, TX – .48% influence (2.30 million people)
Phoenix, AZ – .46% influence (1.60 million people)
Philadelphia, PA – .39% influence (1.60 million people)
Anchorage Municipality, AK – .37% influence (291k people)
Albuquerque, NM – .32% influence (565k people)
Omaha, NE – .32% influence (486k people)
San Antonio, TX – .30% (1.43 million people)
While the top 6 cities stay the same, Anchorage, Albuquerque and Omaha make the list, primarily due to their relatively large share of the population in AK, NM, and NE, as you can see in the image below.
If you’d like to play around with the numbers and sort by the various columns: check out the spreadsheet here.
DC – Taxation without Representation?
DC is particularly interesting, in that its influence of .19% isn’t all that much lower than its nationwide population percentage and there are similarly sized cities roughly as influential.
In fact, on a per-person basis, voters in DC are actually more “influential” per capita than voters in 11 states. This is because DC having 3 electoral college electors as a city of only 689,545 (.55% of electors despite being only .21% of the total population) is disproportionate enough to make up for the lack of Senators or voting Congressional representative. Although DC is still under the average ratio of influence to nationwide population pct (which is 1), there are 11 states with an even lower ratio.
Most Populous Counties in 2020
Per the 2020 Census, the most populous counties were as follows:
Los Angeles County, CA – 10.01 million people
Cook County, IL – 5.28 million people
Harris County, TX – 4.73 million people
Maricopa County, AZ – 4.42 million people
San Diego County, CA – 3.30 million people
Orange County, CA – 3.19 million people
Kings County, NY – 2.74 million people
Miami-Dade County, FL – 2.70 million people
Dallas County, TX – 2.61 million people
Riverside County, CA – 2.42 million people
Most Influential Counties in 2020
Crunching the “influence” numbers gives you:
Los Angeles County, CA – 2.03% influence (10.01 million people)
While the method is definitely imperfect, it does flag the importance of New Castle County to American politics, where Joe Biden began his political career many years ago.
Imperfectly Democratic
In the Senate, the 643,077 people living in Vermont, per the 2020 Census, elect and are represented by 2 Senators, whereas in California, any group of 643,077 people will only comprise a small fraction of the 39,538,223 people who elect and represented by the state’s 2 Senators, per the 2020 Census.
The disparity is somewhat smaller for Congressional races. In terms of apportionment population, the lowest ratio of people to representative is in Montana, where there are 542,704 people for each of its 2 House Representatives. The highest ratio is in Delaware, where there are 990,837 people for Delaware’s lone representative. The apportionment population used to determine the number of representatives in a state is slightly different from a state’s total population, as it includes count of U.S. military and federal civilian employees (and their dependents) living overseas allocated to their home state.
For the Presidency, state’s vote for the number of electors equal to their number of Senators plus their number of representatives. DC, which elects neither a voting member of Congress nor a Senator, votes for 3 electors.
Notes
To be perhaps more accurate, this analysis could incorporate a city’s percentage of voting eligible or participating voter population and the subtle nuances for electoral college electors in NE and ME.
Data from the 2020 Census via Redistricting Data Hub
