Changes of State Representatives and Electoral Votes in 2012

We are close enough to the 2010 Census time that pretty good predictions should be possible for the states which will gain seats in the House of Representatives and states which will lose seats there.  Since the number of Electoral College votes each state has is the sum of the number of Representatives and Senators they have, this also has possible important implications for the presidential race in 2012.

On 23 December 2009, the Census Bureau made its last U.S. population estimate by state as of 1 July 2009 prior to the census.  If these figures were translated into seats in the House of Representatives, the blog site 270toWin says the apportionment results would be:

Texas +3

Arizona +1

Florida +1, now RED

Georgia +1

Nevada +1, now RED

South Carolina +1

Utah +1

Washington +1

Illinois -1

Iowa -1

Louisiana -1

Massachusetts -1

Michigan -1

New Jersey -1

New York -1

Pennsylvania -1

Ohio -2

The states that voted for Obama in 2008 are in blue and those that voted for McCain are in red.  Meanwhile, the voters in Florida and Nevada have become very unhappy with Obama, so Florida and Nevada are now red.  So, of the now Red States, there is a net gain of projected 2012 Representatives and Electoral Votes of +8.  The loss among the Blue States is -8, for a net swing of 16 Electoral College votes and 16 Representatives to the Republicans.  Of course, this is just a zeroth order estimate with respect to the effect upon the House of Representative's party affiliations.  Redistricting and the quality of candidates will have a major impact on the number of Republican Representatives a state winds up with.  The impact on the re-election chances of Obama is more straightforward.

There is something else to observe here.  People go where they can find jobs.  The Red States are clearly creating many more jobs than are the Blue States.  There is a long-term downside to being the more highly socialist party.  The Party of Mass Destruction, the Socialist Democrat Party, is very effective in destroying the business climate and in destroying jobs.  When jobs are killed, as in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois, people have to move away to states with jobs.

This is just a snapshot of the jobs issue, but if one weights the state unemployment rate of November 2009 by the absolute number of Representatives projected as gains or losses, the average now Red State unemployment rate for those changing number of Representatives is 10.24%.  That for the now Blue States changing representation is 10.92%.  By November of 2009, the huge sums of money sent to Wall Street for the bailout had surely kept employment from falling as much in NY and NJ as it otherwise would have.  A huge amount of bailout money was transferred to the auto industry in MI as well.  Since the stimulus bill was mostly a long-time wish list of Democrat special interest funding, more of it went to Blue States than to Red States.  Nonetheless, the Red States still had a lower weighted November 2009 unemployment rate!