It’s going to get tougher and tougher for Democrats to win the Electoral College and the White House if present trends hold, new projections from the U.S. Census Bureau suggest.
Democratic strongholds like California and New York appear likely to lose population and multiple electoral votes, while GOP-leaning states like Texas and Florida are likely to pick up votes. That would lead to a shift in 2030.
Those changes could help expand the map for the GOP, unless Democrats can figure out ways to win Texas, Florida or some other states they lost to President-elect Trump.
“You have people shifting from blue states to red states, and it is indicative of a national trend that bodes well just for Republicans in general,” said Republican strategist Constantin Querard.
He suggested the movement is by people who favor the policies of GOP-led governments.
“They’re going from blue states to red states for a reason,” Querard said.
While the census is only conducted once every 10 years, the bureau annually publishes projections of the population nationwide and in each state, giving an indication of where states are trending ahead of the official counting.
The most recent projections showed most state populations growing but at varying rates and with migration driving growth the most.
An analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice showed the changes could shake up political power after the turn of the next decade. The estimations are based on population growth trends that the bureau reported for the period between July 1, 2022, and July 1, 2024.
The center estimates that California and New York, by far the two largest states in the Democratic coalition of the electoral map, would lose four seats and two seats, respectively. Meanwhile, Texas and Florida, which were the two largest states in President-elect Trump’s winning coalition in 2024, are estimated to gain four seats each.
Taken altogether, if the estimated new map was in place for 2024, Trump would have won 10 additional electoral votes, while Vice President Harris would’ve won 10 fewer.
The difference is relatively small compared to the total 538 electoral votes up for grabs in an election, but it could still be key in the current political environment, which has been defined by tight races.
“The moment in politics with such evenly divided parties and such deep partisan entrenchment and antipathy is not a typical combination in American politics, but it is what we’re in right now,” said Joseph Fishkin, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who has taught and written about election law and the American political system.
None of the past three presidential elections, which encompass the Trump era, would have swung the other way because of these projected shifts, but they could change the calculus for political candidates in determining what to prioritize when campaigning and concentrating on just a handful of battleground states.
Querard noted that the total number of votes Republicans would gain under this estimation is roughly the electoral equivalent of his own state of Arizona, which is currently worth 11 electoral votes and was projected to receive one more after 2030.
“It’s suddenly you need one less state to win,” he said. “Or, if you’re the Democrats, it’s almost like one more state has been taken off the board. Obviously, that’s a big deal because we’ve had some pretty close presidential races.”
Some caveats remain on interpreting this data.
Much can change in five years, including population shifts. Dave Wasserman, the senior editor of Cook Political Report, noted that the projections aren’t great for Democrats, but that the census projections from the end of 2023 looked worse for the party.
In five more years, it could look different still.
Fishkin said the political composition of states can change significantly, especially as a result of national and international politics. While Texas has voted Republican in statewide elections for decades, Democrats have been increasingly bullish about flipping it in part because of the state’s growing population.
But the projections follow a trend that has been present at least throughout the 21st century, just not quite as pronounced before. Florida and Texas have been gaining seats for a few decades, while New York has been losing seats over each reapportionment cycle.
California had been gaining seats until the end of the 20th century before staying the same after 2010 and losing a seat for the first time in its history after 2020.
Some Democrats said the changes mean the party needs to find a new strategy to have a path to victory in the Electoral College.
Since 2016, the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have been key to Democrats’ winning map and have made or broken the party’s chances. But even winning those wouldn’t be enough for a Democratic candidate to win with all other states voting as they did in November.
“It’s yet another flashing red sign for Democrats,” said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish. “I think that Democrats could very easily now see what is their Electoral College count base, such as it is, shrink.”
Reinish said this will put more pressure on the party to expand the map.
Democratic strategist Crimson Macdonald, who is based in Kentucky, said the party needs to go into places it hasn’t in recent cycles to start having conversations with communities outside its base.
Querard and Fishkin said the shifts may even have a larger impact in the House, with state officials choosing how district lines are drawn and determining the makeup of each district.
While a Democratic- or Republican-leaning state losing House seats doesn’t necessarily mean all of those seats will be from the same party, it could make the path to a majority more difficult, especially with fewer and fewer competitive districts.
“If you ask Mike Johnson how much he’d like 10 more seats right now, he would really appreciate it,” Querard said, referring to the Republican House Speaker from Louisiana.
Fishkin said both sides have engaged in gerrymandering, but Republicans have been more aggressive, netting them key seats. For the 2020 redistricting cycle, Republican lawmakers drew maps in a plurality of states, while independent commissions drew a fifth and Democratic lawmakers drew just more than 10 percent.
“Democrats have plenty of reason to worry just because the way our political system is structured, especially with the extra power it currently affords rural areas, both in the Senate and in the House,” Fishkin said.
“Democrats need to find ways to win in places that are more Republican than the average of the United States, and so that’s uphill, and these numbers … will make that a little bit more uphill than it already was.”
