The Changing Political Power Configuration
of the United States.
Part 1
Written by Dmorista in support of Collectivist Action
To lend some support and nuts and bolts electoral political background to Collectivist Action’s excellent series The New Confederacy, I revamped this article, that I wrote a couple of years ago but never posted.
Introduction:
The question of the role of electoral politics for leftists in the U.S. is one fraught with difficult questions. There is the central issue of whether it is worth voting at all, if the result is merely to co-opt dissatisfaction with the socioeconomic status quo that might otherwise manifest itself in a widespread mobilization of left-leaning people in this country. I cannot offer a resolution to that question. We are confronted with an extremely vicious and powerful right-wing political operation; that is increasingly bold and aggressive; and whose most strident operatives are moving towards discarding even the pretense of democracy. I have no problem with voting for Democrats, with the understanding that that is not the end of the political process, in fact it is just the beginning. Democrats have to be pushed just as relentlessly to do the right thing as Republicans do. You just start the process somewhat farther to the left with the Democrats. There is even a traditional belief, among the most progressive elements of the Democratic Party, that the working people are entitled to a decent life, at least theoretically. The best period, for American Working people, was a result of a series of struggles between working people, the Capitalist Elite, and the political parties and elected officials. Those struggles took place during the New Deal and Great Society periods. Even now we can see that the Biden Administration is clearly better than the Trump Regime was. Biden and his administration need to be pushed to do more, but another 4 years of a Trump regime would have had very serious and dangerous consequences for the U.S.
Changes in State Delegations to U.S. House
from the 2020 Census
The results of the 2020 Census, and their effect on the distribution of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the number of Electoral Votes for the states, were released on April 26, 2021.1 There was nothing particularly surprising about this population migration reflecting the fact that the more than 200 year long movement of the population to the West and the 60 year long movement of the population to the South continues. The rate of population growth did slow somewhat and the number of house seats, and electoral votes, gained by Southern and Southwestern states was less than many analysts had predicted. The movement of Americans to the West dates back to the colonial days before the U.S. State was even established. “The West” used to be the western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains, then it was Ohio, Kentucky, and Michigan, then the Central Plains states, and finally “the West'' became the Mountain West and the Pacific Coastal regions. The movement of the U.S. population to the South is more recent. The South stagnated for several decades following the Civil War and Reconstruction; but after WW 2 Florida was the first Southern State to see significant in-migration, followed later by Texas with large population growth, and by North Carolina and Georgia with somewhat lesser but still large levels of population growth, and by Virginia and South Carolina with more moderate growth in population. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee did not undergo significant population changes over recent years, at least when compared to such rapidly changing states as Texas and Florida. Louisiana lost one house seat in 2010 and one in 1990, Mississippi lost one in 2000, and Kentucky lost one in 1990.
Presented below are a total of 16 Maps that show the long-term consequences, in terms of changes in the size of the delegation sent by each state to the U.S. House of Representatives, of this movement of population. The later parts of this migration to the South and West occurred after 1940, during a process that I will address in Part 2 that I call the “Ultra Reactionary / Land Speculator / ‘Right to Work’ / Armaments Production / Sun & Surf Migration Process”. This migration, and the socioeconomic and political policies that encouraged it, moved millions of people and most of the population and economic growth away from the old Industrial Belt of the Northeastern Quadrant. That region roughly corresponds to the Northeast and Midwest Regions as defined by the Census Bureau of the U.S, to the South and the West Regions. Maps 1 & 2 specifically address changes in the pivotal period from 1960 - 2021.
(Note: Map 1 shows Montana “MT” in gray for “No change” in the outline map. That is because Montana had previously lost a House Seat in the 1990 Census and Reapportionment process, and then regained a seat as a result of the 2020 Census results).
The ongoing Modern Era’s 110 year migration of the U.S. population away from the old Main area of settlement, industrial development, and urban land uses continues. The North Eastern quadrant of the U.S. was the area where most of the industrial might as well as the largest cities of the U.S. were located, during the heyday of American power (this is typically defined as from about 1880 - 1975). At this point the Midwest and Northeast have lost a total of 66 house seats since 1960 with the Northeast losing 32 and the Midwest 34 as compared to the situation in 1960. The South and the West gained those 66 seats, with 31 for the South and 35 for the West. There were significant consequences from this shift of population and the resultant political power to states, many of which are run by cliques of extreme reactionaries; from states run by coalitions of moderately effective liberals and the residue of the New Dealers. This shift was a significant factor that made possible the Nixon Presidency, the more draconian “Reagan Revolution”, and other later iterations of Capital’s overall program from the early 1970s on. That agenda centered on attacking the socioeconomic position of American working people. It aimed to retract as many of the socioeconomic advances and as much of the political power the working class had garnered during the New Deal and Great Society periods.
Of course the four regions, as defined by the Census Bureau, Northeast, Midwest, South and West, do not precisely confirm to the less than accurate view of the South and West as completely controlled by reactionaries, or the Northeast and Midwest as bastions of left-liberal politics. Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, all located in the Census Bureau’s South have become bastions of strength for the Democratic Party. California, which previously was a swing state that generally leaned Republican, has become the biggest Core State for the Democrats with its 52 member house delegation and its 54 Electoral Votes.
The Longest Term View of the Shift of House
Delegations and Electoral Votes
In fact, as Maps 3 and 4 below demonstrate, if we take a longer viewpoint and go back another 50 years, to 1910 we can note that: 97 House seats shifted from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West from 1910 / 1920 to 2021. The 1910 / 1920 period is the logical starting point for this comparison / analysis because by 1910 the House of Representatives had reached 433 members. Then when Arizona and New Mexico joined the nation as new states in 1912 they were each assigned one representative to take care of their interests in the U.S. House of Representatives. That brought the level up to 435, the modern size of that assembly. In effect there were 435 House Members from 1912 on to the present day (except for the period from 1959 - 1961 when there were 437 members, after 1 representative was assigned to both Alaska and Hawaii when they were first admitted as states). The number of total electoral votes was 531 the result of the 435 (total house members) plus 96 (total number of senators) for the several Presidential cycles, from 1912 - 1956. Then Hawaii and Alaska were both admitted as states in 1959, and were each assigned one House Member and two Senators that pushed the number of electoral votes up to 537 (437 + 100) just for the 1960 Presidential election. Washington D.C. got its 3 Electoral votes in 1961 and actually cast them in the 1964 Presidential Election. The House was reapportioned back to 435 in 1961-1962 and the modern number of electoral votes, 538, emerged (435 + 100 + 3). I am posting the entire discussion, from the notes to the Census Bureau Table, that describes some further complexities of the situation as to the numbers of representatives in the House of Representatives and the reapportionment process, in the notes below.2
Map 3 here below shows the Changes in the sizes of the House Delegations from 1910 / 1920 to the 2020 Census Reapportionment (add 2 to any given state House Delegation for its number of Electoral Votes for a Presidential Election). Map 3, besides providing a longer view and putting the current changes in perspective; also hides some variations in State rankings for population size and relative growth and decline of their House delegations (some states have gained and then later lost or regained house seats over the years).
A good example among states with significant changes in their House delegation that are masked by growth and decline over the years is Michigan. It is labeled “No Change” in Map 3, but that does not reflect the current political impact of changes in Michigan’s relative position among the populous states. Michigan had 13 members of the House in 1910; the state peaked out at 19 members in both 1960 and 1970 (and 18 in both 1950 and 1980), and is now back to 13 House Members. Of course the 3 states that have lost the largest number of House Members, from their peak size for their respective state delegations are Pennsylvania and New York both at 19 (the peak size for the New York House delegation occurred in 1930 and 1940 at 45 members, so the loss of house members shows as -17 in Map 3); the next highest loss is that of Illinois at 10. Those 3 states, along with Massachusetts that has lost 7 members of its House Delegation plus New Jersey, are the most reliable core states of the Democratic base vote in the East with high numbers of Electoral Votes and large house delegations.
But, on the fairly reliable Republican Side there have been several states that have lost members of their House Delegations. Missouri, which has lost 8 members since 1910, suffered the largest diminution of political power, but Ohio and Iowa have both lost 7, Kentucky has lost 5, and Kansas, Indiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Mississippi have all lost 4 members. Adding in all the reliably Republican states that have lost members of their House Delegations we get a total of 63 lost since 1910 / 1920, but of these only 19 were lost since 1960.
Clearly the biggest growth in population and house delegations was in California, Florida, Texas, and to a somewhat lesser degree Arizona. The population growth and resultant move of house members first took place in California, with massive population growth from the 1920s on through to about 2000. Florida began its period of massive population growth after WW 2 on through to the present time. Texas began massive population growth about 25 years later beginning around the 1970s - 1980s through the present. Arizona started massive rapid population growth a bit earlier than Texas, in the 1960s - 1970s.
{Map 4 Sources: “How Congressional Representation Has Changed Over the Past 50 Years”, “Map 2”, Mar 6, 2014, Geoffrey Skelley, Sabato's Crystal Ball, UVA Center for Politics, at <https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/how-congressional-representation-has-changed-over-the-past-50-years/ >: & “Historical Apportionment Data (1910-2020)”, April 26, 2021, U.S. Census Bureau, at <https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/apportionment-data-text.html>. Updated and modified by Author}.
Using the Tools of Geography to Further Illuminate These Issues
The great majority of discussions about Elections, particularly on the Corporate Controlled Media, always use geographically accurate area maps. That is to say that they use maps that accurately display the area of the land, but that often hide other important attributes with which we may be concerned. So maps are displayed on TV “News” reports or the internet sites reporting on the election; maps that show the majority of the land area of the U.S. consists of places that voted for Trump / Pence in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. Of course much of that land area is inhabited by precious few people; though we will never see a bumper sticker proclaiming the driver is a supporter of “Prairie Dogs for Trump”, or “Grazing Animals for the GOP”.
Here below Map 4A is a typical (supposedly neutral territorial geographic projection) of the State Electoral Votes in the 2016 Presidential Election. This map gives the impression that about ⅔ of the U.S. supported Trump, when actually he lost the Popular vote by around 3 million votes, and won in several pivotal states by small, and often disputed, margins. Not to mention the up to 7 million Democratic leaning voters who were purged from voter rolls in Republican controlled areas leading up to the 2016 election by a variety of stratagems, the Interstate Crosscheck Operation being the best known and documented.
A different way of analyzing both the electoral vote and the popular vote is to use any one of a number of “Cartograms”. That geographic tool is discussed at much greater length in the next section. Here it is enough to mention that in this application in Map 4B below, the Cartogram scales the size of the various states with some consideration of their population and popular vote totals, and/or the number of Electoral Votes they wield. Map 4B, below shows how such modifications to a simple territorial geographic projection displays what actually happened. The most dramatic effects are the exaggerated increases in the sizes of California, Texas, Florida, and New York and the great reduction in the sizes of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota. There are also smaller but noticeable increases in the sizes of Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey; as well as reductions in the sizes of Nebraska, Utah, and West Virginia. All cartograms of this sort end up creating a constriction sort of like a “waist” in the Intermountain West area, where most of the thinly populated states are located.
Map 4C below uses somewhat different mathematical algorithms to display the data. Again the projection of the various states reflects their population and is limited by just how much twisting and distorting of the different states is tolerable in a Cartogram in which we can still identify the states.
Map 4C above shows that the Electoral Votes are much more located in the more populous, but often territorially much smaller, states. This projection still exaggerates somewhat the size of the thinly populated states like Montana and Idaho. Compare in particular the sizes of Montana (3 Electoral Votes) and Idaho (4 Electoral Votes) in this cartogram to New Jersey (14 Electoral Votes), Massachusetts (11 Electoral Votes) and even Connecticut (7 Electoral Votes).
Then there is the question of displaying election data that reflects the margin of victory by one candidate or the other in various jurisdictions. Map 4D below uses county level voting data. It displays the total vote, per county, by the height of a column. It displays the partisan composition of each county’s vote by varying hues of Blue (for Barack Obama in this case) and Red (for Mitt Romney). Purple hues reflect a closer divide in the vote for the two candidates. Reddish purple for counties that favored Romney by small margins, and bluish purple for counties that voted for Obama by various narrow margins.
This also reflects on the claim, frequently made for the 2016 and 2020 elections that Trump carried far more counties than Clinton or Biden did, so how could he have lost? Biden won in around 477 counties and Trump won in the others, which amounted to about 2,650 counties or equivalent jurisdictions. In fact, exactly how many counties the U.S. has, is a somewhat confusing situation. The figure that is generally accepted is that the U.S. has 3,141 Counties and Statistically Equivalent Areas (that includes 3,006 outright counties, the 64 Parishes of Louisiana and various other territorial jurisdictions).3 The difference being that the 477+ counties in which Biden won the vote, include all the large population urban counties and many large population suburban counties.
Cartograms and A Short Review of Their Uses as Concerns Power and Population in the United States
Geographers, going back to at least 1851, developed this different kind of map to more accurately display this sort of data; known as a Cartogram. A Cartogram can be defined as: “A cartogram (also called a value-area map or an anamorphic map, the latter common among German-speakers) is a thematic map of a set of features (countries, provinces, etc.), in which their geographic size is altered to be directly proportional to a selected ratio-level variable, … Cartograms leverage the fact that size is the most intuitive visual variable for representing a total amount.”2 One authority noted that: “A cartogram varies the size of geographic areas based on the data values associated with each area. Typical cartograms scale geographic areas to population, GNP, electoral votes, etc.”4 The variety and accuracy of cartograms has been greatly augmented by the use of computers to analyze and display information. Of course, the ability to falsify data and present bogus displays has also increased greatly.
First Map 4E, a standard geographical projection map of the 45 contiguous U.S. states of 1900, along with 3 territories (Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico). This map shows the number of electoral votes cast by each state, and the way each of the states went in the duopoly election.
Map 4F below is a cartogram of the distribution of Electoral Votes in 1900; it shows how dominant the North Eastern and Midwestern parts of the U.S. were politically, and in terms of population distribution. In fact however, the map seriously understates the situation, in that it does not display the Southern States accurately, but rather displays several of them as being relatively smaller than the states of the Northeast and Midwest. Compare Georgia with its 13 Electoral Votes to Wisconsin with its 12, or South Carolina with its 9 Electoral Votes to Minnesota with its 9. If the South were accurately displayed the map would be significantly more skewed to the eastern half of the U.S. than it is now. And the actual political role and power of the South, and its rough equivalence to the Northeast and Midwest, would be apparent. I cannot find any other modern computer generated cartograms like this for 1912 or other early election years, and I cannot find a better computer generated one than this for 1900. Nonetheless, Map 4F still demonstrates clearly how different the distribution of population, House Members, and Electoral Votes was back in the early years of the 20th century; as compared to how those attributes are distributed now.
Early Political Cartograms:
However, an earlier academic using much more primitive means, was able to provide a cartogram that demonstrates clearly the massive dominance of the U.S. population east of the Rocky Mountains; and the concomitant political muscle those states possessed, in terms of Congressional representation and Electoral votes. This is shown in Maps 4D and 4E; as well as in Maps 4F and 4G. First Map 4D is the original Cartogram prepared in 1911, it superimposes very different block boundaries for the various States that are very different than the simple geographic boundaries are, over an outline map of the Lower 48 States.5 In Map 4E, I have used color cross hatching, superimposed on the original black-and-white outline Map / Cartogram, to dramatize the differences in relative population, congressional representation, and Electoral Vote power of the 4 regions, This was done using colors similar to those employed in the “Congressional Reapportionment Changes by Census Bureau Regions” maps used in this article, namely Maps 2, 4 and 6. Maps 4H and 4K clearly show that the South was a much larger region by population and political power back in the early 20th Century than Map 4F above would imply.
( * Arizona and New Mexico were not admitted as states until 1912. This map / cartogram, which was prepared based on the population of the 46 states and the two contiguous territories of Arizona and New Mexico, was apparently not intended as part of any analysis of Congressional representation, or of votes in the Electoral College; so Arizona and New Mexico were included. Any well-informed person in 1911 would have realized that Arizona and New Mexico would shortly be admitted as states. Note that Arizona and New Mexico are two small rectangles located along the bottom left of the Map / Cartogram, between Texas and California.)
( * Arizona and New Mexico were not admitted as states until 1912. This map / cartogram, which was prepared based on the population of the 46 states and the two contiguous territories of Arizona and New Mexico, was apparently not intended as part of any analysis of Congressional representation, or of votes in the Electoral College; so Arizona and New Mexico were included. I used the phrase “46 Contiguous State” in the Title of the Cartogram to reflect that reality: clearly any well-informed person in 1911 would have realized that Arizona and New Mexico would shortly be admitted as states.)
A Pennsylvania manufacturing tycoon, named Joseph R. Grundy, testified in front of one of the Senate Subcommittees in 1929. He used this map below to argue that the tariffs that the Congress passed did not represent the will of the great majority of the population and of business interests; because of the way the Senate was slanted in favor of states with small populations, though many of them were large in area. He based the relative size of the states in this map on a combination of Census Population Data (presumably from the 1920 Census) and the amounts of Federal and State Taxes collected in each state. This is shown in Maps 4J and 4K here below. The cartographical advances that these maps have over Maps 4G and 4H is that the shape of the various states is maintained to a greater degree with the main distortion being the change in relative size.6
Here in Map 4K below I have again added cross-hatching with colors similar to Maps 2, 4 and 6 the “Congressional Reapportionment Changes by Census Bureau Regions” maps used in this article. The Grundy Map clearly shows the relative size and importance of the 4 regions, with the Northeast, Midwest, and South all being of similar magnitudes of population and political power. The West is still significantly smaller.
Computer Power Used to Produce Political Cartograms
The originator of computer generated Cartograms, Waldo Tobler, produced this image, seen here below in Map 4L in 1961. The changes to the shapes of the States were just as arbitrary, and the distortions as egregious, as in the manually produced Cartograms in Maps 4G - 4H; but in the case of Maps 4L and 4M (as well as Map 4F) they are computer generated using some algorithms devised by Tobler. This is also true for Map 4F though Tobler was not, to the best of my knowledge, involved in setting up the algorithms for Map 4F. The computers and software of the day were rudimentary and we can see those limitations in the outline Cartogram in Map 4L. Nonetheless we can note that the Cartogram shows that relative population and resultant socioeconomic and political magnitude of the West had grown since the time when the Cartograms in Maps 4G and Map 4J were prepared; the data used in Map 4L are presumably from the 1960 Census.
*The Author added maps of Alaska and Hawaii, and the cross hatching, to enhance the map’s projection of the cartographic display of regional population and resultant political power.
Map 4 “Congressional Reapportionment Changes by Census Bureau Regions, 1912 - 2021” displays graphically that the West, as of 1912, had a House Delegation of 33 members, out of the total of 435. Seeing as the West then had 11 states; from 1912 - 1930 inclusive, the West had 55 of the 531 Electoral Votes. These numbers grew to 102 members in the House Delegations of The West, and to 128 of the 538 overall Electoral Votes by 2021. 531 was the total number of Electoral Votes for President in all elections from 1912 - 1956 inclusive. In 1912 the Northeast had a House Delegation of 123 and wielded 141 Electoral Votes, this fell to a regional House Delegation of 78 and 96 Electoral Votes by 2021. The Midwest, in 1912, had a House Delegation of 143 and wielded 169 Electoral Votes, this fell to a regional House Delegation of 91 and 115 Electoral Votes by 2021. The South had a House Delegation of 136 members and wielded 168 Electoral Votes in 1912, this increased to a House Delegation of 164 with 199 Electoral Votes in 2021 (That includes the 3 Electoral Votes of the District of Columbia). Over 109 years the West and South gained 97 House Seats and the Midwest and the Northeast lost 97 House Seats. The 3 Electoral Votes assigned to the District of Columbia by the 23rd Amendment did not directly affect the apportionment of House Members.
The power structure did not like the results of the 1920 Census and did not reapportion the House Seats until after the 1930 Census (the 1920 Census had reported both the large numbers of Eastern and Southern European immigrants, and the rapid growth of urban populations, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, and the effect of that on the demographics of the U.S.). Both sets of maps 4D&E, and 4F&G reflect the relatively small population and political power of the West in the early decades of the 20th Century.
By the early 1960s the West had grown significantly in population. This is shown in Map 4H and Map 4J. By 1961, when Waldo Tobler produced the first computer generated Cartograms of which Map 4H is an early iteration, the West had by then a House Delegation of 69 members, and wielded 95 Electoral Votes. The Northeast by then had a regional House Delegation of 110 members, and wielded 128 Electoral Votes; the Midwest had a regional House Delegation of 125 members and wielded 149 Electoral Votes; and the South had a regional House Delegation of 133 members and wielded 165 Electoral Votes.
There were 537 Electoral Votes for the 1960 Presidential Election as both Alaska and Hawaii were assigned 1 House member and 2 senators upon being admitted as states in 1959 and the House membership temporarily went up to 437. Then the 1961 reapportionment removed the 2 temporary extra House Members, and the 23rd Amendment brought on the DC 3 Electoral Votes (without legislative representation of course). The modern electoral system for selecting the President was established in the form it still takes.
Notes and References:
1). See, “2020 Census Apportionment Results Delivered to the President’, April 26, 2021, Release Number CB21-CN.30, U.S. Census Bureau, at < https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2020-census-apportionment-results.html >).
2). From, “Historical Apportionment Data (1910-2020)”, “notes 1 - 3”, Apr 26, 2021, U.S. Census Bureau, at
< https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/apportionment-data-text.html >:
“2 In 1912, Arizona and New Mexico became states and each were granted a seat—temporarily increasing the size of the House to 435. In 1920, the Census Bureau did transmit apportionment counts to Congress, but Congress did not reapportion. The size of the House during the next apportionment, in 1930, was fixed at 435.
“3 In 1900, there were 386 seats in the House. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and was granted 5 seats—temporarily increasing the size of the House to 391. The size of the House during the next apportionment, in 1910, was increased to 433.”
“1 In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became states and were each granted a seat—temporarily increasing the size of the House to 437. The size of the House for the 1960 apportionment reverted back to the fixed size of 435 seats.
3). “States, Counties, and Statistically Equivalent Entities”, “Table 4-3. Number of Counties and Statistically Equivalent Entities for the 1920 and the 1940 Through 1990 Decennial Censuses” pg. 4-9 (chpt 4, pg 9), Chapter 4 in, The Geographic Areas Reference Manual (GARM), Chpt 4, at < https://www2.census.gov › pdfs › reference › GARM PDF >: “How Biden managed to win far more votes in 2020 than Obama did in 2008 — but far fewer counties”, Dec 15, 2020, Jon Greenberg, Politifact, at < https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/dec/15/how-biden-managed-win-far-more-votes-2020-obama-di/ >: “Biden-won counties are home to 67 million more Americans than Trump-won counties”, Jan 21, 2021, William H. Frey, The Brookings Institution, at < https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2021/01/21/a-demographic-contrast-biden-won-551-counties-home-to-67-million-more-americans-than-trumps-2588-counties/ >.
4). “Cartogram”, Wikipedia, at < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartogram >: “Thirty Five Years of Computer Cartograms”, 2004, Waldo Tobler, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(1), pp. 58–73.
5). “1911 Cartogram: Apportionment Map of the United States”, Feb 19, 2008, John Krygier, Making Maps: DIY Cartography: Resources and Ideas for Making Maps, at < https://makingmaps.net/2008/02/19/1911-cartogram-apportionment-map/ >.
6). “Early Cartograms”, Dec 8, 2008, Zachary Forest Johnson, indiemaps.com/blog, at < http://indiemaps.com/blog/2008/12/early-cartograms/ >: “1911 Cartogram: Apportionment Map of the United States”, Feb 19, 2008, John Krygier, Making Maps: DIY Cartography: Resources and Ideas for Making Maps, at < https://makingmaps.net/2008/02/19/1911-cartogram-apportionment-map/ >, High ).
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