Congressional Reapportionment and National Political Power

Abstract

Since World War II there has been much speculation on the economic, social and political impact of population growth and redistribution in the United States. In I947 the Bureau of the Census published its first estimates of I950 population, and it projected trends for the decade of the I940's. These data and the facts now uncovered by the I950 census reveal a wealth of evidence on economic and social changes that have taken place during the last decade. Observers are sure that the political impact of population changes is equally significant. But here the lines of development are not as clear, nor as easy to trace, as in the socio-economic field. Our system of government in the United States is not designed to be immediately and completely responsive to population shifts within the country. Once every Io years heads are counted; only then do we pause to gear our political institutions to population changes. At the national level this is done primarily by reapportioning representation so as to approximate the populations of each of our 48 states. The political touchstone of the I950 census returns is congressional reapportionment. Indeed, at only two points-in Congress and in the electoral college-are there any outward political manifestations of population change. The 1951 reapportionment of congressional seats increased the voting strength of 7 state delegations in the United States House of Representatives and decreased the size of 9. Since a state's representation in the electoral college is based on the sum total of its membership in the lower house of Congress plus its 2 United States senators, there has been a resultant and parallel redistribution of presidential-electoral votes. These two changes may be said to represent constitutional readjustment to the I950 census. Certain relatively obvious political effects stem from reapportionment. The basic change in the electoral college will be reflected in state voting power at the national nominating conventions held by the Republican and Democratic parties in 1952, 1956, and I960. Individual candidacies for presidential and vice-presidential nomination may well be affected. And the ability of some states to gain more high political appointments for their citizens will be enhanced or retarded. Some of these consequences may be subjected to measurement, but others may not. The number of electoral votes is not the sole determinant of voting power at