How Non-Citizens Impact Political Representation and the Partisan Makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives
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At present, the apportionment of U.S. House seats among the states, as well as the drawing of congressional district lines within states, are based on total population — not citizenship.1 At the time of the last congressional election in 2022, Census Bureau data captured 21.6 million non-citizens, roughly half of whom are here illegally.2
Because these non-citizens are not evenly distributed across the country, they make up a large share of the population of many congressional districts. It typically requires many fewer votes to win in such districts compared to districts comprised largely of citizens. This raises important questions about the principle of “one person, one vote.” The presence of non-citizens also strongly correlates with support for Democratic candidates.
Our findings are not due to non-citizens voting illegally. Rather it is a consequence of the enormous size of the non-citizen population due to high levels of legal immigration and the failure to stem illegal immigration. This report is a companion to another CIS report looking at immigration and apportionment.
Excel Spreadsheet with Non-Citizen Population by U.S. House District
Among the findings:
- The 13 congressional districts with the highest share of non-citizens in 2022 have roughly the same combined population of voting-age U.S. citizens as the nine districts with the lowest non-citizen shares. Thus, in these nine districts there are four fewer representatives for the same number of citizens.3
- The population of districts can differ partly because of the way House seats are apportioned among the states.4 But within states district populations should be roughly even.5 Yet, non-citizens caused significant distortions in 2022:
- TX 33rd, where 29 percent of adults are not citizens, has 208,000 fewer voting-age citizens than TX 21st, where 4 percent are not citizens.
- FL 26th, where 27 percent of adults are not citizens, has 189,000 fewer adult citizens than FL 6th, where 3 percent are not citizens.
- CA 34th, where 30 percent of adults are not citizens, has 162,000 fewer adult citizens than CA 3rd, where 5 percent are not citizens.
- NY 6th, where 27 percent of adults are not citizens, has 169,000 fewer voting-age citizens than NY 21st, where 2 percent are not citizens.
- Not surprisingly, the non-citizen share of the voting-age population also had a large impact on total turnout in 2022. In the 10 districts with the largest non-citizen shares, the combined vote total was roughly half that of the combined vote total in the 10 districts with the highest citizen shares. In effect, each voter in the 10 lowest-citizenship districts had about twice the influence on the election as voters in the 10 highest-citizenship districts.6
- It took many more votes to win districts comprised largely of citizens than it did in districts with large non-citizen populations in 2022. On average, the winning candidate received about 73 percent more votes in the 54 districts where less than 2 percent of adults are non-citizens than in the 24 districts where one in five adults is a non-citizen.7
- Districts where non-citizens comprise a large share of the population tend to vote Democratic, while high-citizenship districts tend to vote Republican.
- Of the 24 districts where one in five adults is not an American citizen, only four were won by a Republican in 2022. In contrast, in the 54 districts where less than 2 percent of adults are not citizens, just five are represented by a Democrat.
- In 2022, each 1 percentage point increase in the non-citizen share of a congressional district’s adult population is associated with a 1.8 percent point increase in the Democratic share of the two-party vote.8 This reflects the fact that the voters who live around non-citizens tend to be Democrats, who end up having more voting power due to the presence of a large number of non-citizens. This is not evidence of non-citizens voting.9
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Endnotes
1 Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” This has generally been interpreted to mean all individuals, not just citizens, are included when seats are apportioned. It is always possible the Supreme Court would approve a reinterpretation of this provision, but this is unlikely, especially in light of other wording in the Constitution. Of course, the Constitution could be amended to exclude non-citizens from apportionment. In terms of drawing district lines within states, the Supreme Court ruled in Evenwel v. Abbott (2016) that states may draw House district lines by total population, but it did not indicate if this is required. So at present it remains undetermined whether a state could draw district lines based on just eligible voters, though to do so it would need citizenship data for all persons. The 1950 Census was the last time all respondents were asked their citizenship, though the question could be added back into the Census. The Trump administration tried to add the citizenship question back into the 2020 Census but was rebuffed by the Supreme Court in Department of Commerce v. New York. The court found that while a citizenship question did not violate the Constitution or the Census Act, the stated reason for adding the question was not the actual reason the administration wished to add the question. Therefore, it is possible that citizenship could be included in a future Census if done correctly.
2 The citizenship data in this analysis is based on the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS), which is a very large survey conducted by the Census Bureau. The survey asks about citizenship, allowing for good estimates of population characteristics, including citizenship, by congressional district. (As noted in end note 1 above, the decennial Census does not currently ask about citizenship.) Because the ACS is not a census, if a state wished to draw lines based on the population of citizens, it seems certain a citizenship question would need to be added to the census in the future. The citizenship data for each district is available at census.data.gov.
3 In 2022, the combined population of voting-age citizens in the 13 districts that have the highest share of non-citizens was 5.64 million, which is only 2.5 percent larger than the 5.5 million voting-age citizens in 2022 in the nine districts with the smallest shares of non-citizen adults.
4 In the apportionment process, each state receives one seat regardless of population. Since 1940, the remaining 385 seats are then apportioned to the states using a system called ”equal proportions”, which determines how the remaining seats are distributed. Some states have populations just below the threshold needed to receive an additional seat, while others have a population just enough to get an additional seat. This can produce districts of somewhat different sizes. Furthermore, six states have only one representative due to their small populations; in some cases, this makes for a district that is smaller or larger than the national average. However, Delaware’s single district is by far the largest in the country because the population of the state is too small to receive a second representative but is significantly larger than the typical district in a state with many districts. Idaho’s two districts are also very large because the state fell just short of being apportioned a third seat.
5 In Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that districts in the House of Representatives must be roughly equal in population. Earlier and subsequent court cases have reinforced this principle.
6 In the 10 districts with the largest non-citizen shares, a combined 1.37 million votes were cast in 2022. In contrast, in the 10 districts with the highest citizen share, 2.69 million votes were cast. In two of the top-10 highest non-citizen districts, the Democrat ran unopposed, but the presence of a Republican did not seem to make much difference as the total votes in those two districts were not very different from the other eight highest non-citizen districts. Also, in one of the top-10 districts with the highest citizen share, the Republican ran unopposed. But again, the vote total in that district was similar to the other nine high-citizenship districts where a Democrat did run.
7 The winning candidate in the 24 highest non-citizen districts received 104,000 votes on average in 2022 compared to 180,000 in the 54 districts with the highest citizen shares. (The 180,000 average excludes the 4th district of Louisiana. The state does not report vote totals when a candidate runs unopposed.) The 2022 vote totals in the 24 districts with the highest percentage of non-citizens include four where there was no major party opposition. If we exclude these four districts, the winning candidate averaged 100,000 votes in 2022. In the 54 districts with the highest share of voting-age citizens there were six, including the Louisiana 4th, in 2022 where there was no major party opposition. Excluding the Louisiana 4th and the five other districts with no opposition, the winners in the remaining 48 districts received 176,000 votes on average in 2022. The presence of an opposition candidate may have some impact on turnout, but not much.
8 The scatter plot displays the relationship between the non-citizen share of the adult population and the share of the two-party vote that goes to Democrats. There were a number of districts where there was no majority party opposition, hence the values in the scatter plot showing Democrats receiving zero or 100 percent of the vote in some cases. If we exclude all those cases, the relationship still remains strong but drops to a 1.41 percentage point increase in the Democratic share of the vote for every one percentage point increase in the non-citizen share of a district’s population.
9 In general, the relatively smaller number of votes in districts with large non-citizen populations is consistent with non-citizens not voting. If non-citizens were voting in large numbers, we would expect that the total vote would not be so low.
