Census Quick Hits

The Actual Enumeration: Fulfilling the government’s obligation to count our people under Article I section 2 of our constituting document, last year’s census determined that the number of people in the United States in 2020 was 331 million. At a 7.4 percent growth since 2010, it means the last ten years are basically a tie for the slowest rate of expansion since this whole little project began in 1790. (The slowest-ever winner, at 7.3 percent: The 1930s, i.e., the Great Depression.)

Winners and Losers: States gaining Electoral College votes (and House seats): Texas (which picked up two), Colorado, Florida, Montana, Oregon, and North Carolina. States losing EC votes/seats: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Fun fact: If we redid the 2020 election, that would be a net gain of 3 ECs for Trump. And if that had happened, Biden would have only had 303 votes. Or, to put it another way: It wouldn’t have made any difference at all, because it wasn’t a very close election.

Campaign Quick Hits

More paid press releases: The DCCC has rented a mobile billboard to drive around Orlando, FL for 8 hours while the GOP is having their legislative retreat in town. (This doesn’t even seem like a particularly good paid press release—8 hours on the side of a van is all it takes these days?!—but it was enough to get it written up by Axios, so what do I know.) The NRCC has responded with their own ads targeting a handful of vulnerable Democrats. But that’s not why I’m highlighting them here. Watch each sides’ ad for yourself and you’ll have a glimpse into Christmas Midterms Future. The Democrats want you to know that the GOP are a bunch of white supremacist whackadoodles who storm the capitol in their free time. The Republicans would like you to believe that Democrats hate the police, want to abolish prisons, and “are calling for violence,” citing Maxine “more confrontational” Waters. 

Audrey talked to Rep. Mike Johnson, the Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference, who is down in Orlando. “The political war in my view is summarized real simply,” Johnson said, “It’s between the survival, the maintenance, the preservation of our freedom versus this new vision of socialism that the other side is offering.”