California exodus puts state on path to lose congressional seats in 2030

New California population estimates show major shifts in the state’s congressional delegation in the 2030 reapportionment cycle, during which it could lose four House seats.

A projection released Tuesday from the conservative-leaning American Redistricting Project, funded by the Fair Lines Foundation, shows the Democratic state’s delegation could drop from 52 to 48 amid recent population declines. New York is also projected to shed seats, losing three.

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Republican-led states such as Texas and Florida are projected to gain four and three, respectively. Under the American Redistricting Project’s predictions, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia are all expected to gain one.

Data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau show California’s population dipped to the lowest numbers since 2015, dropping by around 75,000 from 2022 to 2023. The state’s 2023 population is about 38.9 million. California saw a major loss while trying to recover from the pandemic, with its population declining by about 500,000 between April 2020 and July 2022.

California’s mass exodus has been the center of debate between Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Ron DeSantis (R-FL), both of whom took jabs at the other’s home state on Fox News a few weeks ago.

“California has more natural advantages than any state in the country,” DeSantis said during the debate moderated by Sean Hannity. “You almost have to try to mess California up — and yet that’s what Gavin Newsom has done since he’s been governor. He’s the first governor to ever lose population. They actually at one point ran out of U-Hauls.”

Since Newsom took office in 2019, California’s population declined for the first time ever in 2020. In another historic first, California lost a House seat in 2021.

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Newsom has countered DeSantis’s remarks by noting “more Floridians coming to California than the other way around in the last two years.”

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, more Floridians have moved to California based on the numbers per capita in recent years, confirming Newsom’s argument. Using census data, PolitiFact determined that 1.32 per 1,000 Floridians moved to California and 1.31 per 1,000 Californians moved to Florida in 2022 — a margin some say is too thin to hold any weight.