Reapportionment can have a big effect on the balance of power in Congress, but what about its impact on presidential elections? Not as much as you might think, Nate Silver says at FiveThirtyEight.com.
Although the new Census numbers will result in gains in Congress–and thus in the Electoral College–for some Republican-leaning states such as Texas and Florida, and losses in Democratic states such as New York and Massachusetts, the shift wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the 2008 Obama-McCain race, Silver says.
In fact, no presidential election in the last century would have come out differently under the Electoral College allocation that will be in effect in 2012. Some close races would have been even closer, but none of the results would have changed. Even Bush vs. Gore in 2000 would have come down to some hanging chads in Florida.