New York lost a House seat by only 89 people in 2020 census count


New York was one of seven states to lose a House seat and Electoral College vote after the 2020 census count, and, boy, was it a close call.
The Empire State was neck-in-neck with Minnesota in the race to avoid a seat loss, but New York needed 89 more people and Minnesota ultimately kept its delegation intact (if 26 fewer Minnesotans sent in their information, the story would have been different, as well). That's the narrowest population margin by which the last seat in Congress was decided since at least 1940, surpassing a difference of 231 in 1970.
The news prompted many people to point out the importance of filling out census forms, though others grimly noted that the census is a count of the population as of April 1, 2020. At that point, New York, and especially New York City, was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and had already reported 447 COVID-19 deaths. Tim O'Donnell
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.