واشنگٹن (پاکستان نیوز) ادارہ شماریات نے نئے اعدادو شمار کے حوالے سے دعویٰ کیا ہے کہ 2022 میں ڈیموکریٹس ہائوس میں اپنی برتری کو بڑھانے میں کامیاب رہیں گے ، ڈیموکریٹس نیشنل پاپولر ووٹ 2 سے 3پوائنٹس کے ساتھ جیتنے میں کامیاب رہے ہیں لیکن اس کے باوجود انہیں دس سے پندرہ سیٹوں میں شکست کا سامنا کرنا پڑا ہے ۔ ادارہ شماریات کے مطابق ڈیموکریٹس زیادہ تر شہری آبادیوں کی جماعت ہے جہاں آبادی میں تیزی سے اضافہ ہو رہا ہے لیکن گزشتہ دس سالوں کے دوران ملک کی 52 فیصد کائونٹیز میں آبادی ناقابل توقع کم ہوئی ہے ۔
2020 census: These 7 states show how Republicans could redistrict their way to victory in 2022
WASHINTON DC,After a series of lengthy, pandemic-related delays — and multiple attempts by the Trump administration to meddle with the process — the U.S. Census Bureau finally released its 2020 data on Thursday, painting a demographic portrait of a nation that has become significantly less white and considerably more urban over the past decade.
The real question, however, is how these new numbers will shape the coming fight over redistricting: the fraught process by which states redraw their political maps, often in ways that benefit the party in power — and could ultimately determine who controls Congress after the 2022 midterm elections.
To sort through all the political implications of the new census data, Yahoo News spoke to Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election forecasting newsletter published by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and author of the forthcoming book “The Long Red Thread: How Democratic Dominance Gave Way to Republican Advantage in US House Elections.”
Kondik’s big-picture read of the results? “They were different [from expectations] in ways that you could argue were a little bit better for Democrats than Republicans,” he explained. “But the Republicans do still have some significant advantages.”
Given the Democrats’ exceedingly narrow majority in the U.S. House, Kondik argues that the GOP could plausibly take control of the chamber in 2022 even if they don’t do any better with voters. “There’s also a world in which Democrats win the national popular vote for the House by 2 or 3 points like they did in 2020 — yet they still lose 10 or 15 seats,” he said. “That’s the power of redistricting.”
Here’s more from Kondik on why that is — and the seven states to keep a close eye on in the weeks and months ahead: Florida, Texas, North Carolina, New York, Illinois, Colorado and Virginia.
Kyle Kondik: The general takeaway is that the results weren’t as bad for Democrats as some thought they’d be. The Census Bureau is always revising the numbers with estimates over the course of a decade, and so there were 2019 census estimates for all 435 congressional districts. But those weren’t the actual census results. The actual numbers that came out Thursday were different than the estimates — and they were different in ways that you could argue were a little bit better for Democrats than Republicans.
How so?
Heading into the census, Democrats were pretty concerned that there would be a significant undercount of Latinos in particular.
Why would that have been a problem for Democrats?
Donald Trump did better with Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016. But it’s still generally a Democratic-leaning group. So the idea is that if there’s an undercount of a typically Democratic-leaning group — like Latinos — that means that districts that are significantly Latino have to get bigger, because otherwise they would be underpopulated. All [U.S. House] districts have to have roughly the same number of people in them. And that could lead to some Democratic districts having to get bigger, which could have the effect of putting more Democrats into them and making surrounding districts more Republican.
We’re still sorting through the numbers, but at the top line that didn’t happen. The Latino count was totally in line with the census estimates. What’s more, the census actually showed a smaller share of non-Hispanic whites than expected: about 2 percent less. And white voters, of course, are more likely to be Republican.
Another big finding is that the U.S. population is gravitating toward metro areas. Is that good for Democrats as well?
The bottom line is that the Democrats are more of an urban, densely populated party. And the places that are growing are generally densely populated places. On the opposite side of the equation, the census also found that 52 percent of all the nation’s counties have lost population over the last 10 years, which is an amazing stat. The big places are getting bigger and the small places are getting smaller.
