How Many Seats Are in the House of Representatives

Apportionment, or the process of determining the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives, happens like clockwork at this point. Every 10 years, the Census Agency counts how many people each state has so uses that number to summate how many representatives each state gets out of the 435 seats.¹ In April, for example, we learned from the reapportionment process that California would lose a seat for the very first time while Texas would proceeds two.

Simply despite some states losing seats while others selection them up, the reapportionment procedure is itself now fairly mundane. That wasn't always the case, though.

"The beginning presidential veto was used on the apportionment police force, so information technology's been a hot result from the very, very beginning," said Margo Anderson, a professor emerita at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who studies the social and political history of the demography. In fact, until the House was capped at 435 seats² past the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act, each apportionment period was regularly accompanied by clashes over how to best divvy upwardly political ability in Congress — including the size of the House.

On the 1 hand, it's probably a practiced affair that Congress is no longer debating the size of the House every ten years. After all, the reason we have the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Deed in the first place is that Congress was unable to achieve an agreement on how to reapportion the Business firm for near a decade.

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On the other paw, the fact that the size of the House hasn't increased in more a century is a real problem for our democracy. For starters, there is an ever wider gulf betwixt Americans and their representatives, as the average number of people represented in a commune has more tripled, from virtually 210,000 in 1910 to well-nigh 760,000 in 2020.ⁱⁱⁱ Moreover, some states are severely over- and underrepresented every bit a event.

Increasing the size of the House would not resolve all the challenges facing the U.S., as any expansion would involve trade-offs. For example, adding representatives could decrease 24-hour interval-to-24-hour interval legislative efficiency, and it would undoubtedly increase the size of the federal government. Yet expanding the House is one of the more straightforward reforms that leaders in Washington could pursue in our era of polarized politics. The size of the Business firm is determined by statute, not the Constitution, meaning Congress could pass (and the president could sign) a constabulary to modify information technology.

It'due south worth exploring, and then, whether 435 is notwithstanding an appropriate number of House members to represent our sprawling, diverse nation. Whether Congress will accept up this issue anytime soon is another question entirely, only hither'due south how we got stuck at 435 in the get-go place — and what it would hateful if we increased that number.

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Why 435?

In that location accept been 435 seats in the Business firm for so long now that it might seem as if the Founding Fathers had foreseen it as a natural ceiling for the chamber's size. But that isn't the instance: 435 is entirely arbitrary. The Business firm arrived at that number because of political expediency — and it has stayed there because of it, too.

Up until 1910, when the bedchamber expanded from 391 to 435 seats,⁴ the size of the House had experienced a mostly unchecked design of growth. Only once, subsequently the 1840 census, did the number of seats in the House not increase; 1910, however, marked the last time the House grew, even though the U.S. population has more tripled since then, from over 90 million in 1910 to over 330 million today.

The 1920 census is when things bankrupt downward. For the kickoff time, a majority of the population lived in "urban" areas. And although the Census Bureau'south definition was wide — it included any place with at least 2,500 people — the finding reflected America'south ability middle was moving abroad from rural areas toward urban ones due to industrialization and high levels of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. This fabricated the apportionment process particularly challenging, equally Congress had to navigate two competing concerns: starting time, the worry that greater urban power would atomic number 82 to rural seat loss if the House didn't expand, and second, a growing belief amidst many members that the Business firm was already too crowded and that an increase in seats would make it truly unwieldy.

Nonetheless, the Republican chair of the House Census Committee put forward legislation in 1921 to increase the size of the Business firm by 48 seats — 483 in total. Once again, this would accept prevented any state from losing a seat, a politically bonny option.⁵ Simply this time both parties were deeply divided over expanding the House, with arguments that adding seats would be too expensive or hinder legislative functions.

Congress tried a number of alternatives. First, the House passed an amended bill to proceed the House at 435 members. Xi states stood to lose seats as a result, and unsurprisingly many senators from those states worked behind the scenes to keep that bill from always getting a vote in the Senate. Next, the House tried to expand to only 460 seats instead of 483, which would have caused only two states to lose a seat, only that narrowly failed by 4 votes on the House floor. This left Congress at an impasse, and over the next few years, reapportionment stalled.

Some rural legislators charged that the timing of the 1920 census presented an inaccurate film of the country's population, claiming for example that many people had migrated to cities only temporarily during World War I only would before long return to rural areas. Others argued that not-citizens ought to be excluded from the counts, which would take primarily affected Northern states with large immigrant populations. Meanwhile, some Northern Republicans, upset by Democrats' disenfranchisement of Black Americans in the S, countered that representation ought to exist reduced in Southern states that suppressed voting rights. In that location were also arguments over which method was best for apportioning seats, as one method tended to put slightly more than seats in less populous states and the other put more than seats in more than populous states.

The lack of consensus on how to reapportion the Firm meant that by the late 1920s, reapportionment had dragged on for most a decade and had all the makings of a ramble crunch. "The issue began to come to a head as the 1928 election loomed," said Anderson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "Considering the realization was, we've got the Balloter Higher apportioned on the basis of the 1910 demography, and if the popular vote and the electoral vote diverge, it's considering we didn't reapportion."

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Fortunately for balloter legitimacy, Republican Herbert Hoover won both the popular and electoral vote in the 1928 presidential ballot. Having served from 1921 to 1928 as secretary of commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau, he was specially cognizant of Congress's apportionment failure. In April 1929, Hoover called a special session of Congress, where one of the main focuses was apportionment, and past June, legislation had passed both the Business firm and Senate and was signed by Hoover. The law, the Apportionment Act of 1929, created what we know as the "automatic" reapportionment process today. Information technology capped the number of House seats at 435 and moved the responsibility of determining the seat count from Congress to the president — an early example of Congress giving away ability to the executive co-operative.⁶

Simply given the rancor surrounding reapportionment, the law didn't come up without serious consequences for representation. Specifically, it cut requirements that members be elected in single districts and that those districts be contiguous and compact, serving relatively equal-sized populations. This meant a state that lost seats could at present draw wildly asymmetric districts to keep power in more rural parts of the state.

"It essentially created massive malapportionment for the side by side 40 years," said Anderson. Simply, she stressed, this was done because it made the law "politically palatable."

In fact, the law'south lack of a population requirement helps explicate why more than half of all members from rural districts backed it, even though most of us that lost seats were based in the rural South and Midwest.^seven These representatives knew their states might lose seats, but they hedged that their slower-growing or shrinking districts might not end up on the chopping block now that the apportionment process didn't require districts to have equal populations.

Afterwards, to uphold the tenet of "one person, one vote," the Supreme Court would rule that congressional districts must exist approximately equal in population, but that wouldn't happen until 1964. And fifty-fifty so, diff representation in the House has persisted, largely because the size of the sleeping accommodation hasn't budged despite massive growth in the U.S. population.

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The problem with being stuck at 435

In 1910, the largest state, New York, had virtually nine million more people than the smallest — that is, least populous — country, Nevada. Only today, the largest state, California, has virtually 39 million more than people than the smallest, Wyoming.

This staggering gap makes information technology far more probable for states to end upwardly with wildly unequal district populations cheers to the Constitution's requirement that each state have at least one congressional district. The Supreme Courtroom requires districts to have equal populations, but this applies simply to the districts within a state — non between states. So even though the average Firm district will take just over 760,000 people later on this round of reapportionment, each state's average district will vary quite a flake, especially as states get smaller in size.

Have the smallest and largest states with only 1 representative: Wyoming and Delaware, respectively. Wyoming, with simply under 578,000 people, winds upwards overrepresented because it'south guaranteed a seat despite falling well short of that 760,000 national boilerplate. Conversely, Delaware has nearly 991,000 people, which leaves information technology underrepresented because information technology isn't quite large enough to earn a second seat. Meanwhile, Montana has merely nearly 95,000 more people than Delaware, simply that'southward plenty for the apportionment formula to eke out a second seat, pregnant Montana will have two districts to Delaware's 1 and an average commune size of merely over 542,000, making its constituents the most represented in the country.

Land lines make perfectly equal districts across the country impossible, but there's no question that increasing the size of the House would aid reduce how unequal district sizes among states accept go. Expanding the House could also make districts smaller, which in turn could help with representation, equally the average number of people living in a congressional district has grown by well-nigh 520,000 people from 1920 to 2022 — 3 times more than than the total shift from 1790 to 1910.

In fact, the problem of representation in the U.Due south. is so bad that each member of the House represents far more people on average than legislators in nearly other large, developed — or developing — democracies. On the one paw, this is somewhat understandable given the U.S. has the third-largest population in the globe after China and India, the latter of which also happens to be the just democracy with more people per representative than the U.S. Only across India, other large democracies with more than 100 million people, like Brazil and Japan, offer their constituents far more representation than the U.S. Moreover, their lower legislative chambers are only somewhat bigger than the U.Due south. House.

The U.S. has a representation problem

Average population per seat in the lower legislative bedroom or unicameral legislature in the U.S. and 30 other democracies

State	Population (millions)	Seats	Avg. population per seat
India	i,326.1	543	2,442,161
United States*	331.i	435	761,169
Brazil	211.7	513	412,702
Republic of colombia	49.1	172	285,377
Japan	125.five	465	269,909
Mexico	128.6	500	257,299
Argentina	45.v	257	176,962
Republic of korea	51.eight	300	172,784
Australia	25.5	151	168,652
Kingdom of spain	l.0	350	142,902
South Africa	56.v	400	141,159
Germany†	fourscore.2	598	134,046
France	67.8	577	117,588
Republic of chile	xviii.2	155	117,334
Netherlands	17.iii	150	115,203
Canada	37.seven	338	111,521
Great britain	65.8	650	101,171
Italy	62.4	630	99,052
Poland	38.three	460	83,222
Belgium	11.7	150	78,138
State of israel	viii.7	120	72,296
Czechia	ten.7	200	53,512
Republic of hungary	nine.8	199	49,105
Republic of austria	8.nine	183	48,412
Portugal	10.iii	230	44,794
Switzerland	8.4	200	42,020
New Zealand	4.9	120	41,046
Greece	10.6	300	35,357
Denmark	5.9	179	32,790
Sweden	10.two	349	29,233
Finland	five.6	200	27,858

"Our congressional districts are just massive, at that place's really zero else similar it," said Jonathan Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford University who studies political geography. "The calibration of districts in Canada, the U.M. and Australia is and then much smaller … the U.Southward. is really an outlier in this."

Brian Frederick, a political scientist at Bridgewater State University, studies apportionment issues and has argued that the House should be expanded. He notes how the size of America'south districts hurts the quality of representation that voters receive. In fact, his research has plant a lot of upsides for smaller districts. For example, representatives who serve fewer people are more than popular, more than probable to take contact with their constituents and more than likely to get higher marks for their constituent service. Moreover, they ofttimes meliorate reverberate the views and makeup of the people in their districts. "The reality is that it'due south easier to represent fewer people than information technology is a larger number of citizens on a per-district basis," said Frederick.

Both he and Rodden noted that an expansion of the House could also increment the relative demographic diversity in the House. For instance, having districts with smaller populations could produce a plurality-Native American congressional district in Arizona or New Mexico, which is currently not possible given the size of the group'southward population. However, Rodden warned that opportunities to expand representation for minority groups could vary, peculiarly in the South, where Black voters are oft over-full-bodied in districts to ensure representation.

Calculation seats to the House could accept balloter benefits, too. First, a growing Business firm would go far less likely that states lose representation in the reapportionment process. Nether electric current weather, states with a shrinking population oft lose seats, merely this is true even of states where the population is growing.⁸ An expansion of the Firm would also help reduce the Balloter Higher's bias toward small states, as more populous states would pick upwards more than representatives, and therefore electoral votes in the Balloter Higher.^ix And finally, a larger House could theoretically aid reduce partisan gerrymandering. As Rodden told me, when you add together more and more seats, you converge on proportional representation at some indicate because the districts just become and then small. Still, he cautioned that line drawers could go pretty creative, so more districts might not always result in more proportional representation.¹⁰

Clearly, expanding the House has many potential upsides — many of them beneficial to democracy, also — but, of form, a lot hinges on but how many seats would be added. And on that signal at that place is no easy answer.

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How to expand the House

A number of ideas have emerged for how all-time to expand the Firm. Some reformers have suggested a one-time, arbitrary fix, similar adding 50 seats. Others accept argued for a more substantive overhaul, like resizing the Business firm based on the population of the smallest state — oft called the Wyoming rule, as Wyoming has occupied this position since 1990.

But there'due south actually a adequately straightforward solution that isn't likewise far off from what America used to do earlier — albeit unintentionally. It's known every bit the cube root constabulary in political science, or the fact that the size of a state'southward parliament often hews to the cube root of the nation's population.

Matthew Shugart, a professor emeritus at Academy of California, Davis, has tried to unpack why this is oftentimes the case. After all, at that place is no constabulary that says countries' parliaments must exist the cube root of their population, yet they oft are, every bit the chart below shows. Of the thirty major democracies Shugart and his co-authors looked at aslope the U.Due south., a majority of them take legislatures very shut to — or fairly about — the cube root of their populations.

Accept Canada. Its lower legislative bedchamber, the House of Commons, has 338 seats, almost exactly in line with the cube root law'south expectation of 335 seats. This is in big part because Canada has frequently adjusted the sleeping accommodation'southward seat count to account for population growth. Only other bigger democracies like Brazil and Japan also have seat counts that fall fairly close to the cube root of their respective populations. Of form, this isn't true of every commonwealth Shugart and his co-authors studied. Some countries like the U.South. fall well below the cube root of its population. And countries like Australia, India and Israel are even more underrepresented than the U.South. in their legislatures.¹¹ Information technology'southward also the case that some countries like Deutschland, Italy and the U.K. may really be overrepresented in their lower chambers — for instance, the U.Grand.'southward House of Commons has 650 seats, well more than than the expected 404 seats.

According to Shugart, the reason why representation in countries' lower chambers is often and then close to the cube root of their populations is that the legislators must strike a balance betwixt communicating with one another and their constituents. "It is nearly finding what is the optimal size," he said. And in many countries, that seems to be roughly the cube root of a country's population.

In fact, information technology'south a pattern the U.South. used to mostly follow until the size of the Firm was capped at 435 seats in 1929. Only as the chart below shows, the House would take to grow to 692 seats to reflect where the cube root law expects representation in the U.S. to be now.

That would make the Firm almost sixty percentage larger than it is now, and then it's hard to imagine a one-time increase of that scope. Shugart suggested a phased expansion over the next few decades, although he besides didn't call up the Firm necessarily had to go all the fashion to 692 seats — he just stressed that, co-ordinate to the cube root law, where the U.Due south. currently falls suggests that information technology is dramatically underrepresented.

Regardless of the potential benefits of a bigger House, though, there would likely be steep opposition to expanding it because of some of the tradeoffs — and potential downsides — involved. For example, a larger Business firm would by necessity hateful a bigger authorities and more spending. House members make $174,000 per year, and after 5 years of service they are also eligible for a pension. Combine that with new staff, new construction for office space, perhaps even a roomier Firm chamber and you're talking virtually many millions or even billions of dollars.

There could also exist consequences for governing, too, such as more gridlock and partisanship. "Past increasing the number of players who have to be satisfied in the legislative game, you make arriving at the kind of majorities — or, in most cases, supermajorities — that yous need to laissez passer legislation more than hard," said L. Marvin Overby, a political scientist at Pennsylvania State Academy-Harrisburg who studies Congress and has expressed skepticism toward the promised benefits of House expansion. He as well warned that a bigger House might produce fewer competitive seats thanks to partisan sorting and fewer representatives open to compromise. "You lot would have fifty-fifty less of an incentive as an individual fellow member of Congress to try to do things on a bipartisan basis," said Overby, "because your district would exist increasingly homogeneous — increasingly Autonomous or increasingly Republican."

As such, even more elections may be effectively decided by primaries instead of full general elections than they are today, which is already the case in the vast majority of House districts. And with more safe seats, incumbents would likely have an fifty-fifty easier fourth dimension getting reelected than they currently do.

In addition, there but isn't public support for expansion at this bespeak. In 2018, 51 percent of Americans told the Pew Research Heart that the size of the House should stay the same, while only 28 pct wanted to expand it (some other eighteen percent really wanted to shrink it). Moreover, members of Congress aren't wild about the idea, either. Legislation introduced in Feb by Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, a Democrat who died in April, aims to constitute a bipartisan commission to examine the size of the House, among other things. Merely the bill has only four co-sponsors and looks unlikely to go anywhere.

Clearly, there are pros and cons to increasing the size of the House, but at the very least, the idea should be more than openly debated because, in terms of changes that could be made to our institutions, expanding the House is actually doable. For instance, the Senate's pocket-size-state bias often gets a lot more attention, merely any change to the Senate would require a constitutional amendment whereas the size of the House could be altered with a simple bill.

"It's going to be difficult to increase the size of the Firm of Representatives; I'm under no illusions," said Frederick of Bridgewater State Academy. Nevertheless, it may be time for a modify given how unequal districts have get between states and how underrepresented Americans are after more than 100 years of being stuck at 435 Firm members. Said Frederick, "In that location's no doubt that a larger Firm with smaller constituency population size per district would better the representational quality that citizens receive from members of Congress."

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Footnotes

1. Strictly speaking, the House has 441 members: 435 are voting members from each of the fifty states, and six are nonvoting members. The District of Columbia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa each accept a delegate, while Puerto Rico has a resident commissioner.

2. This number increased to 437 in 1959 to accommodate the statehood of Alaska and Hawaii simply returned to 435 in 1963, after the reapportionment process in 1960.

3. Throughout this slice, we'll often refer to demography years equally the time when the Business firm was reapportioned for simplicity's sake. But historically, Congress has usually passed circulation acts in the year or 2 afterward the census was released, only still in time for elections ahead of the adjacent Congress.

4. Upon statehood, Congress added two seats for New United mexican states and i for Arizona in 1912 during the 62nd Congress, which had already passed the Apportionment Human action of 1911. This brought the full number of House seats to 394 before the House expanded to 435 seats in the 63rd Congress.

5. Minimizing seat loss had long been a major consideration in the circulation process, to the point that simply a handful of states lost any seats in the five apportionments from 1870 to 1910.

6. This is why even now the secretarial assistant of commerce reports apportionment figures to the president, who and then transmits that information to Congress.

7. In full, 21 states lost seats every bit part of the reapportionment process, and about of them were in the South or Midwest. Meanwhile, the 11 states that gained seats were industrial states like New York and Michigan and fast-growing states more often than not in the West.

8. Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania all grew nigh 2 pct betwixt 2010 and 2020, for instance, simply all three states still lost seats in the 2022 apportionment process.

9. A state'southward electoral vote count is the total number of representatives plus a state's ii senators. (The current number of electors is also what FiveThirtyEight is named afterward, and then if this happened, we might accept to consider a name change. Mayhap SixThirtyEight?)

10. In a 2013 paper that Rodden co-authored, he plant that the more districts were added to Florida's map, the more proportional the partisan split became across those districts, although Republicans notwithstanding retained an advantage given Democrats' overconcentration in urban areas. Merely he didn't discover this pattern everywhere. For example, his forthcoming study of Pennsylvania's map didn't find that adding more districts led to more proportional outcomes.

11. The lower chambers in the case of Australia and India. Israel has a unicameral legislature.

Geoffrey Skelley is an elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight. @geoffreyvs

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