One of the major political questions this year is whether New York State will lose one or two congressional districts.
This is a tough question to answer because we might not know the results of the 2020 census until April 30 or even later. Even though federal law requires that state population totals be finalized by Dec. 31 in the census year, the COVID pandemic has thrown the entire census-taking process for a curve. This delays not only conducting the headcount that took place last year, but also the tallying of census numbers that are used to allocate congressional districts among the states, redraw congressional, state legislative and city council district boundaries, and distribute billions of dollars in federal funds for hundreds of programs.
