How Many Seats Are There in the House of Representatives

Apportionment, or the process of determining the number of seats each state has in the U.South. House of Representatives, happens like clockwork at this point. Every 10 years, the Demography Bureau counts how many people each country has and so uses that number to calculate how many representatives each country gets out of the 435 seats.¹ In Apr, for instance, we learned from the reapportionment procedure that California would lose a seat for the very start fourth dimension while Texas would gain 2.

But despite some states losing seats while others option them up, the reapportionment process is itself now fairly mundane. That wasn't always the instance, though.

"The showtime presidential veto was used on the apportionment constabulary, and then it's been a hot issue from the very, very commencement," said Margo Anderson, a professor emerita at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who studies the social and political history of the census. In fact, until the House was capped at 435 seats² by the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act, each circulation period was regularly accompanied past clashes over how to best divvy upwardly political power in Congress — including the size of the House.

On the one hand, information technology's probably a good thing that Congress is no longer debating the size of the House every x years. After all, the reason we have the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Deed in the get-go place is that Congress was unable to attain an understanding on how to reapportion the House for nearly a decade.

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On the other paw, the fact that the size of the House hasn't increased in more than a century is a existent trouble for our republic. For starters, at that place is an always wider gulf betwixt Americans and their representatives, as the average number of people represented in a district has more than than tripled, from nearly 210,000 in 1910 to about 760,000 in 2020.ⁱⁱⁱ Moreover, some states are severely over- and underrepresented as a upshot.

Increasing the size of the Business firm would not resolve all the challenges facing the U.Due south., as whatsoever expansion would involve trade-offs. For instance, calculation representatives could subtract solar day-to-day legislative efficiency, and information technology would undoubtedly increase the size of the federal government. Nonetheless 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 House is determined by statute, non the Constitution, pregnant Congress could pass (and the president could sign) a law to change information technology.

It's worth exploring, then, whether 435 is nevertheless an appropriate number of House members to represent our sprawling, diverse nation. Whether Congress will accept up this event anytime shortly is another question entirely, but here's how nosotros got stuck at 435 in the first place — and what it would hateful if we increased that number.

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Why 435?

There have been 435 seats in the House for so long at present that it might seem as if the Founding Fathers had foreseen it equally a natural ceiling for the chamber's size. Simply that isn't the case: 435 is entirely capricious. The Firm arrived at that number because of political expediency — and it has stayed there because of it, besides.

Upwards until 1910, when the chamber expanded from 391 to 435 seats,⁴ the size of the House had experienced a mostly unchecked pattern of growth. But once, after the 1840 demography, did the number of seats in the House not increase; 1910, all the same, marked the final fourth dimension the Business firm grew, fifty-fifty though the U.S. population has more than than tripled since then, from over ninety million in 1910 to over 330 1000000 today.

The 1920 census is when things broke down. For the beginning time, a majority of the population lived in "urban" areas. And although the Demography Agency'south definition was wide — it included whatsoever identify with at to the lowest degree 2,500 people — the finding reflected America's ability center was moving away from rural areas toward urban ones due to industrialization and loftier levels of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. This made the circulation process especially challenging, as Congress had to navigate two competing concerns: first, the worry that greater urban power would lead to rural seat loss if the Business firm didn't expand, and 2nd, a growing belief among many members that the House was already too crowded and that an increase in seats would brand information technology truly unwieldy.

Nevertheless, the Republican chair of the Business firm Census Committee put frontwards legislation in 1921 to increment the size of the House by 48 seats — 483 in full. Once over again, this would take prevented whatsoever state from losing a seat, a politically attractive option.⁵ Merely this time both parties were securely divided over expanding the House, with arguments that adding seats would be too expensive or hinder legislative functions.

Congress tried a number of alternatives. Get-go, the House passed an amended nib to keep the House at 435 members. Eleven states stood to lose seats as a event, and unsurprisingly many senators from those states worked backside the scenes to continue that bill from e'er getting a vote in the Senate. Next, the House tried to expand to just 460 seats instead of 483, which would have caused only two states to lose a seat, simply that narrowly failed by four votes on the House flooring. This left Congress at an impasse, and over the next few years, reapportionment stalled.

Some rural legislators charged that the timing of the 1920 demography presented an inaccurate pic of the country'due south population, claiming for instance that many people had migrated to cities merely temporarily during World War I but would soon return to rural areas. Others argued that non-citizens ought to be excluded from the counts, which would have primarily affected Northern states with large immigrant populations. Meanwhile, some Northern Republicans, upset by Democrats' disenfranchisement of Black Americans in the Southward, countered that representation ought to be reduced in Southern states that suppressed voting rights. There were besides arguments over which method was best for apportioning seats, as one method tended to put slightly more seats in less populous states and the other put more seats in more populous states.

The lack of consensus on how to reapportion the House meant that by the tardily 1920s, reapportionment had dragged on for nearly a decade and had all the makings of a constitutional crisis. "The result began to come to a head as the 1928 ballot loomed," said Anderson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "Because the realization was, we've got the Electoral College apportioned on the basis of the 1910 demography, and if the pop vote and the electoral vote diverge, it's considering we didn't reapportion."

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Fortunately for electoral legitimacy, Republican Herbert Hoover won both the popular and balloter vote in the 1928 presidential election. Having served from 1921 to 1928 as secretary of commerce, which oversees the Census Agency, he was especially cognizant of Congress's apportionment failure. In Apr 1929, Hoover chosen a special session of Congress, where one of the main focuses was apportionment, and by June, legislation had passed both the House and Senate and was signed past Hoover. The police force, the Circulation Act of 1929, created what we know equally 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 on example of Congress giving away power to the executive branch.⁶

But given the rancor surrounding reapportionment, the law didn't come without serious consequences for representation. Specifically, information technology cutting requirements that members be elected in single districts and that those districts be contiguous and meaty, serving relatively equal-sized populations. This meant a land that lost seats could at present depict wildly disproportionate districts to keep power in more rural parts of the state.

"It substantially created massive malapportionment for the side by side 40 years," said Anderson. But, she stressed, this was done considering it fabricated the police force "politically palatable."

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

Later on, to uphold the tenet of "one person, i 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 then, unequal representation in the House has persisted, largely because the size of the chamber hasn't budged despite massive growth in the U.Southward. population.

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The problem with beingness stuck at 435

In 1910, the largest state, New York, had about nine one thousand thousand more than people than the smallest — that is, least populous — state, Nevada. But today, the largest state, California, has nearly 39 1000000 more people than the smallest, Wyoming.

This staggering gap makes information technology far more likely for states to cease upward with wildly unequal district populations thanks to the Constitution's requirement that each land take at to the lowest degree 1 congressional district. The Supreme Court requires districts to accept equal populations, only this applies but to the districts inside a land — not between states. So even though the average Firm commune will have merely over 760,000 people after this round of reapportionment, each state's boilerplate district will vary quite a bit, particularly every bit states get smaller in size.

Take the smallest and largest states with only one representative: Wyoming and Delaware, respectively. Wyoming, with just nether 578,000 people, winds upwards overrepresented considering information technology's guaranteed a seat despite falling well short of that 760,000 national boilerplate. Conversely, Delaware has nearly 991,000 people, which leaves it underrepresented considering it isn't quite big enough to earn a second seat. Meanwhile, Montana has but about 95,000 more people than Delaware, but that's enough for the apportionment formula to eke out a second seat, meaning Montana will accept two districts to Delaware's 1 and an average district size of just over 542,000, making its constituents the about represented in the country.

State lines make perfectly equal districts across the land impossible, only there's no question that increasing the size of the House would assistance reduce how unequal commune sizes among states have become. Expanding the House could also brand districts smaller, which in turn could help with representation, as the average number of people living in a congressional district has grown by about 520,000 people from 1920 to 2022 — iii times more than the total shift from 1790 to 1910.

In fact, the problem of representation in the U.Southward. is so bad that each member of the House represents far more people on average than legislators in most other large, adult — or developing — democracies. On the i hand, this is somewhat understandable given the U.Due south. has the third-largest population in the earth after China and India, the latter of which also happens to exist the only democracy with more than people per representative than the U.Due south. But beyond India, other large democracies with more than 100 million people, like Brazil and Japan, offer their constituents far more than representation than the U.S. Moreover, their lower legislative chambers are only somewhat bigger than the U.S. Firm.

The U.South. has a representation problem

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

Land	Population (millions)	Seats	Avg. population per seat
Bharat	1,326.one	543	ii,442,161
U.s.a.*	331.i	435	761,169
Brazil	211.7	513	412,702
Colombia	49.1	172	285,377
Nippon	125.5	465	269,909
Mexico	128.half-dozen	500	257,299
Argentina	45.5	257	176,962
South Korea	51.8	300	172,784
Australia	25.5	151	168,652
Spain	50.0	350	142,902
South Africa	56.5	400	141,159
Federal republic of germany†	lxxx.2	598	134,046
France	67.viii	577	117,588
Republic of chile	18.2	155	117,334
Netherlands	17.3	150	115,203
Canada	37.7	338	111,521
Great britain	65.eight	650	101,171
Italy	62.four	630	99,052
Poland	38.3	460	83,222
Kingdom of belgium	eleven.7	150	78,138
Israel	8.7	120	72,296
Czech Republic	10.vii	200	53,512
Hungary	9.eight	199	49,105
Austria	8.nine	183	48,412
Portugal	10.3	230	44,794
Switzerland	8.4	200	42,020
New Zealand	iv.9	120	41,046
Greece	10.vi	300	35,357
Denmark	five.9	179	32,790
Sweden	10.2	349	29,233
Finland	5.half-dozen	200	27,858

"Our congressional districts are just massive, at that place's really nothing else like it," said Jonathan Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford University who studies political geography. "The scale of districts in Canada, the U.Chiliad. and Australia is and so much smaller … the U.S. is really an outlier in this."

Brian Frederick, a political scientist at Bridgewater State University, studies apportionment bug 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 inquiry has found a lot of upsides for smaller districts. For instance, representatives who serve fewer people are more than pop, more likely to have contact with their constituents and more likely to get higher marks for their elective service. Moreover, they often better reflect the views and makeup of the people in their districts. "The reality is that it's easier to represent fewer people than it is a larger number of citizens on a per-commune footing," said Frederick.

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

Adding seats to the House could have electoral benefits, besides. First, a growing House would make it less likely that states lose representation in the reapportionment process. Nether current conditions, states with a shrinking population often lose seats, simply this is true even of states where the population is growing.^viii An expansion of the Business firm would too aid reduce the Balloter College'south bias toward pocket-size states, as more populous states would pick upwards more than representatives, and therefore electoral votes in the Electoral College.⁹ And finally, a larger Firm could theoretically assist reduce partisan gerrymandering. As Rodden told me, when yous add more and more seats, you converge on proportional representation at some point because the districts just get so small. Nonetheless, he cautioned that line drawers could get pretty artistic, so more districts might non always result in more proportional representation.¹⁰

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

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How to expand the Firm

A number of ideas have emerged for how all-time to aggrandize the House. Some reformers accept suggested a i-time, arbitrary set, like adding 50 seats. Others have argued for a more substantive overhaul, like resizing the Business firm based on the population of the smallest state — often called the Wyoming dominion, every bit Wyoming has occupied this position since 1990.

But at that place's actually a fairly straightforward solution that isn't too far off from what America used to do before — albeit unintentionally. It's known equally the cube root law in political scientific discipline, or the fact that the size of a country's parliament often hews to the cube root of the nation's population.

Matthew Shugart, a professor emeritus at University of California, Davis, has tried to unpack why this is often the case. Later on all, there is no law that says countries' parliaments must be the cube root of their population, all the same they often are, as the chart below shows. Of the 30 major democracies Shugart and his co-authors looked at alongside the U.South., a bulk of them have legislatures very close to — or adequately near — the cube root of their populations.

Take Canada. Its lower legislative chamber, the House of Commons, has 338 seats, almost exactly in line with the cube root constabulary'south expectation of 335 seats. This is in large role considering Canada has often adapted the bedchamber's seat count to account for population growth. But other bigger democracies similar Brazil and Nihon too have seat counts that autumn adequately close to the cube root of their respective populations. Of form, this isn't true of every republic Shugart and his co-authors studied. Some countries like the U.S. fall well beneath the cube root of its population. And countries like Commonwealth of australia, Republic of india and Israel are even more underrepresented than the U.S. in their legislatures.¹¹ It's besides the case that some countries like Frg, Italy and the U.Grand. may actually exist overrepresented in their lower chambers — for instance, the U.Yard.'s House of Commons has 650 seats, well more than the expected 404 seats.

According to Shugart, the reason why representation in countries' lower chambers is oft and so close to the cube root of their populations is that the legislators must strike a balance between communicating with one some other and their constituents. "It is about finding what is the optimal size," he said. And in many countries, that seems to be roughly the cube root of a land's population.

In fact, it's a pattern the U.South. used to mostly follow until the size of the House was capped at 435 seats in 1929. Just as the chart below shows, the House would have 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 House almost threescore percent larger than it is now, so it'due south difficult to imagine a one-time increase of that telescopic. Shugart suggested a phased expansion over the next few decades, although he also didn't think the House necessarily had to get all the way to 692 seats — he but stressed that, according to the cube root law, where the U.S. currently falls suggests that it 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 case, a larger House would by necessity mean a bigger authorities and more spending. Firm members make $174,000 per year, and afterwards 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 House bedchamber and you're talking almost many millions or even billions of dollars.

There could also exist consequences for governing, too, such equally more than gridlock and partisanship. "Past increasing the number of players who have to be satisfied in the legislative game, you lot make arriving at the kind of majorities — or, in most cases, supermajorities — that you demand to pass legislation more hard," said Fifty. Marvin Overby, a political scientist at Pennsylvania Land University-Harrisburg who studies Congress and has expressed skepticism toward the promised benefits of House expansion. He also warned that a bigger House might produce fewer competitive seats thank you to partisan sorting and fewer representatives open to compromise. "Y'all would have fifty-fifty less of an incentive as an private member of Congress to try to do things on a bipartisan footing," said Overby, "because your commune would exist increasingly homogeneous — increasingly Democratic or increasingly Republican."

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

In addition, there just isn't public support for expansion at this point. In 2018, 51 percentage of Americans told the Pew Research Heart that the size of the Business firm should stay the same, while only 28 percent wanted to expand it (another eighteen percent really wanted to shrink it). Moreover, members of Congress aren't wild well-nigh the idea, either. Legislation introduced in Feb by Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, a Democrat who died in April, aims to establish a bipartisan committee to examine the size of the House, amidst other things. Simply the bill has only 4 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 exist more than openly debated because, in terms of changes that could be made to our institutions, expanding the House is really doable. For instance, the Senate's small-state bias often gets a lot more than attending, but any alter to the Senate would require a ramble amendment whereas the size of the Firm could be altered with a simple bill.

"Information technology'south going to exist difficult to increase the size of the House of Representatives; I'm under no illusions," said Frederick of Bridgewater State University. However, it may be fourth dimension for a modify given how diff districts take become between states and how underrepresented Americans are afterwards more than than 100 years of existence stuck at 435 House members. Said Frederick, "In that location'south no doubt that a larger House with smaller constituency population size per district would meliorate the representational quality that citizens receive from members of Congress."

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Footnotes

1. Strictly speaking, the Firm has 441 members: 435 are voting members from each of the 50 states, and 6 are nonvoting members. The Commune of Columbia, Guam, the U.Southward. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa each have 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 but returned to 435 in 1963, later the reapportionment procedure in 1960.

3. Throughout this slice, we'll often refer to census years as the time when the House was reapportioned for simplicity's sake. But historically, Congress has usually passed apportionment acts in the yr or two later on the census was released, but yet in time for elections ahead of the next Congress.

4. Upon statehood, Congress added two seats for New United mexican states and one for Arizona in 1912 during the 62nd Congress, which had already passed the Apportionment Act 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 apportionment process, to the point that just 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 then transmits that information to Congress.

7. In total, 21 states lost seats as role of the reapportionment process, and most of them were in the South or Midwest. Meanwhile, the 11 states that gained seats were industrial states similar New York and Michigan and fast-growing states generally in the Westward.

8. Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania all grew about 2 percentage between 2010 and 2020, for case, but all iii states yet lost seats in the 2022 apportionment process.

9. A country's electoral vote count is the total number of representatives plus a country's two senators. (The current number of electors is also what FiveThirtyEight is named after, and so if this happened, nosotros might have to consider a name modify. Perhaps SixThirtyEight?)

10. In a 2013 paper that Rodden co-authored, he plant that the more districts were added to Florida'due south map, the more proportional the partisan split became beyond those districts, although Republicans still retained an advantage given Democrats' overconcentration in urban areas. But he didn't observe this blueprint everywhere. For instance, his forthcoming study of Pennsylvania's map didn't notice that adding more districts led to more than proportional outcomes.

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

Geoffrey Skelley is an elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight. @geoffreyvs

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