NY Congressional Delegation Takes Another Hit

New York's congressional delegation, still large compared to most but shrinking since World War II, will fall by another one or two seats after the latest population count by the 2010 U.S. Census, The New York Times reports. Growth in the southern and western regions of America has come at the expense of New York, which is already down to 29 House seats from a numerical peak of 45 in the 1940s.

“Proportionately, the New York delegation, which accounted for 15 percent of the Congress in 1813, will be barely 6 percent in 2013,” the Times reports.

Every 10 years, the Census sets off a political scramble over House seats, which figure into every state’s ability to collect federal money and influence federal laws. In some shrinking states, bruising political battles erupt over which congressional seats, and whose, to drop. Even growing states fight, with the party in power at the time of the "reapportionment" often re-drawing House voting districts to give itself more new seats.

The U.S. population is almost 311 million, with almost 19 million living in New York state, the Census reports.