Like rain on Thomas Hofeller’s wedding day

I think there’s a very good chance that Trump prematurely ending the census count to deliberately undercount Hispanic voters cost Florida, Texas, and Arizona House seats in this year’s reapportionment:

But even the big winners didn’t get as much as expected. Many thought Texas would gain three seats and Florida would gain two. And in some cases the losers barely lost — New York, for instance, came within 89 people (no, that’s not a typo) of retaining a seat that it ultimately lost to Minnesota. (New York’s population did increase, despite some estimates that it would remain static.)

One possible explanation for these changes is that the delays produced by the Covid-19 pandemic led to unusual results, as some people didn’t respond to the census or had temporarily moved locations. Another possibility is that the Trump administration’s efforts to change some of the census rules did indeed have consequences. Under former President Donald Trump, the Census Bureau had proposed not counting undocumented immigrants — for the first time ever. Ultimately this effort did not succeed, but the uncertainty may have led many Hispanics to be wary of census-takers, producing shortfalls in Hispanic-heavy states such as Arizona, Texas and Florida, where some analysts anticipated gains (especially in Arizona, which surprisingly didn’t gain any seats at all).

Most notably, Arizona, Texas, and Florida (all with large Latino populations) also undershot their estimates by a large margin; these also all gained fewer seats than expected. By contrast, New York way overperformed its estimate (by almost 900K!), which almost saved it 2 seats. pic.twitter.com/f3idEAQcvU— David Jarman (@DavidLJarman) April 26, 2021

It would be a hell of a coincidence otherwise. Just because Trump wanted to enforce the Voting Rights Act!