What to know about President Trump's proposed new census and 2026 elections

USA Today

2 days ago

The population survey helps decide how many congressional seats each state gets. Here's why a new one would matter.
President Donald Trump announced his intention to "immediately begin work on a new" census, raising questions about whether the plan would be constitutional and how it would affect the partisan makeup of Congress.
His announcement came amidst Texas Republicans' efforts to perform an unusual mid-decade redrawing of congressional maps, which are normally drawn after the census determines the number of seats in each state's delegation at the beginning of each new decade.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the GOP-led state legislature hope to add up to five new seats for their party by redistricting, prompting proposals for Democratic states to redraw their congressional maps in retaliation.
Trump's Aug. 7 social media post said a new survey should be taken "based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024," and that people "who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS."
USA TODAY has reached out to the White House for comment. Neither the U.S. Census Bureau nor the Commerce Department responded to requests for comment.
"I think you would have to see, at some point, do things start moving?" said Shawn Donahue, a political science professor at the University of Buffalo. "Is it something that is more of just a press release, or is there something that the Commerce Department is going to start doing?"
How often is the census taken?
The U.S. Constitution calls for the census to be conducted every 10 years, and in years that end in zero, most recently in 2020. The U.S. Census Bureau, part of the Commerce Department, carries out these resource-intensive surveys and hires temporary staff to conduct outreach to count as many people as possible.
The survey results are used to decide how seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are distributed to each state based on its population, a process called apportionment. Those processes usually take place in the first two years of a decade.
The survey results are also used to determine how much federal funding is distributed to states, and researchers widely cite the demographic research to understand the country.
Who supports conducting a mid-decade Census?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, announced a bill in July that would require a new census to be performed, counting only U.S. citizens, and then direct states to redraw their congressional districts based on the new numbers. "Americans don't feel like they're represented in Washington," she said.
Hans Von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he thinks states should redraw their congressional districts every five years, as long as data is available, but it usually isn't. He said the United States has a mobile and constantly increasing population that a survey held every 10 years doesn't capture.
He also pointed to a 2022 report from the U.S. Census Bureau that found 14 states had statistically significant differences between the bureau's count and the actual population. Six states — Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas — had undercounts. He said better data quality might have led to more congressional seats in Texas and Florida.
Who opposes a mid-decade census?
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, criticized Trump's proposal as "a comprehensive campaign to flout the U.S. Constitution in order to predetermine election outcomes so he can consolidate his power and avoid accountability to the American people."
Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, told National Public Radio that following through "would defy the Constitution, federal law, and settled precedent" and her organization "won't hesitate to go back to court to protect representation for all communities."
Why would Trump want to conduct a new Census?
"The Republicans are so desperate at this point to forestall what's likely going to happen in 2026," said Michael P. McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida.
Democrats are widely expected to win seats in the House of Representatives in next year's congressional elections, because the party that occupies the White House usually does poorly. Trump also has low approval ratings. That blue wave could flip control of the House, in which Republicans hold a 219 to 212 majority.
McDonald said if Republicans draw new congressional districts, they might be able to mitigate the number of seats they lose.
For example, the Republican stronghold of Texas saw such rapid population growth when the 2020 survey came out that it gained two additional congressional seats. Republican-leaning states of Florida and Montana, Democrat-leaning Oregon and Colorado, and tightly contested North Carolina each gained one seat.
The Democratic population centers of California, Illinois, and New York each lost one seat; so did Republican-leaning Ohio and West Virginia, and the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Are immigrants counted in the census?
Yes. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says Representatives shall be apportioned according to the "whole number of persons in each State." This ended the longstanding practice of counting three-fifths of enslaved people for purposes of representation. There is no language in the 14th Amendment that restricts these counts to citizens or people with legal presence in the country.
During his first term, Trump attempted to add a question to the 2020 census asking if the person completing the survey was a citizen. The Supreme Court struck that down in 2019. The following year, Trump issued a memorandum saying undocumented immigrants should not be included in counts that determine congressional representation.
Could Republicans gain more seats if a new census were conducted?
Van Spakovsky said a mid-decade census could result in more congressional seats for Texas and Florida. Both are red states with rapidly increasing populations, and both were undercounted in the 2020 census. Texas, for example, was undercounted by almost 550,000 in 2020 and added another 2 million people by 2024. By comparison, an average of 760,000 people live in each congressional district.
Within hours of Trump's statement, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Republican, said he's setting up a new redistricting committee.
McDonald said the congressional maps are the fairest they've been in about 40 years, because of redistricting reform efforts across the country to prevent unfairly drawn districts. He said that the congressional maps are already drawn in a way that there are more Republican-leaning districts than Democratic-leaning ones, despite the practice of including undocumented immigrants in the count.
McDonald pointed to South Florida, where he said the current lines place right-leaning Cuban Americans with high voter turnout rates in the same districts as lower-propensity, Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters. If the maps were redrawn to not include undocumented immigrants, as Trump has suggested, he said there would likely be only two congressional seats in the area. "Who's going to be on that game of musical chairs?" he asked.
How would a new census affect 2026 or 2028?
Reapportioning congressional seats affects two things: How many congressional seats each state has and how many electoral votes each state has, because electoral votes are equal to each state's total number of Senate and House seats. House terms last two years, and the elections take place in even years, with the next one coming in 2026. The next presidential election happens in 2028. But this doesn't mean that a new census will take place or that maps will be rejiggered by then.
"It seems pretty unlikely that you could do this for 2026, just because it takes so long," said Donahue. The government also isn't allowed to speed up the process by basing its count on statistical sampling, he said, pointing to a 1999 Supreme Court decision that said people must be counted. "It's not something where you can snap your fingers and it's going to happen."
Von Spakovsky suggested the U.S. Census Bureau update a form it already sends out regularly and use it to perform a mid-decade census survey. "You couldn't get it done this year, but I don't see any reason why you couldn't get it done next year," he said.
Would Trump's order to do a mid-decade census go to court?
"Absolutely," said Donahue. "The Constitution calls for a decennial census. It doesn't say that you can't (have more). But, I mean, it pretty much implies that you're only going to do one every 10 years."
Donahue predicted that Democratic-leaning states would be most likely to challenge a mid-decade census in court. But the administration could argue that the requirement to do it every 10 years isn't a prohibition on doing it more often.
"There's no legal bar in place that says you can't redistrict more than once every 10 years," von Spakovsky said.
Contributing: Francesca Chambers