Why Is There 435 Members in the House of Representatives

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

Just despite some states losing seats while others selection them up, the reapportionment procedure is itself at present fairly mundane. That wasn't always the instance, though.

"The start presidential veto was used on the apportionment law, and so it's been a hot issue from the very, very get-go," said Margo Anderson, a professor emerita at Academy of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who studies the social and political history of the census. In fact, until the Firm was capped at 435 seats^two by the 1929 Permanent Circulation Human action, each apportionment period was regularly accompanied past clashes over how to best divvy upward political power in Congress — including the size of the House.

On the ane mitt, it's probably a good thing that Congress is no longer debating the size of the Business firm every ten years. After all, the reason we have the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act in the starting time identify is that Congress was unable to achieve an agreement on how to reapportion the House 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 than than a century is a real problem for our democracy. For starters, there is an ever wider gulf between Americans and their representatives, every bit the boilerplate number of people represented in a district has more tripled, from about 210,000 in 1910 to most 760,000 in 2020.³ Moreover, some states are severely over- and underrepresented every bit a issue.

Increasing the size of the House would non resolve all the challenges facing the U.S., as any expansion would involve trade-offs. For instance, adding representatives could subtract day-to-solar day legislative efficiency, and it would undoubtedly increment the size of the federal government. Notwithstanding 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, not the Constitution, meaning Congress could pass (and the president could sign) a constabulary to modify it.

Information technology's worth exploring, then, whether 435 is withal an appropriate number of House members to represent our sprawling, diverse nation. Whether Congress will have up this issue anytime soon is another question entirely, but hither'southward how we got stuck at 435 in the beginning place — and what it would mean if we increased that number.

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Why 435?

There have been 435 seats in the House for so long now that it might seem every bit if the Founding Fathers had foreseen it as a natural ceiling for the bedroom'south size. But that isn't the case: 435 is entirely arbitrary. The Business firm arrived at that number because of political expediency — and it has stayed there considering of it, besides.

Upward until 1910, when the chamber expanded from 391 to 435 seats,⁴ the size of the Firm had experienced a mostly unchecked pattern of growth. Merely once, subsequently the 1840 census, did the number of seats in the House not increase; 1910, withal, marked the last time the Firm grew, fifty-fifty though the U.S. population has more than tripled since then, from over 90 million in 1910 to over 330 million today.

The 1920 demography is when things bankrupt down. For the outset time, a majority of the population lived in "urban" areas. And although the Census Bureau'due south definition was broad — information technology included any place with at to the lowest degree 2,500 people — the finding reflected America'south ability center was moving abroad from rural areas toward urban ones due to industrialization and high levels of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. This made the apportionment procedure particularly challenging, as Congress had to navigate two competing concerns: showtime, the worry that greater urban power would lead to rural seat loss if the House didn't expand, and second, a growing belief among many members that the Business firm was already likewise crowded and that an increase in seats would make information technology truly unwieldy.

Nevertheless, the Republican chair of the House Demography Committee put forward legislation in 1921 to increase the size of the Firm by 48 seats — 483 in full. Once once again, this would have prevented any state from losing a seat, a politically attractive option.^five But this time both parties were securely divided over expanding the Business firm, 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 neb to go along the House at 435 members. 11 states stood to lose seats as a result, and unsurprisingly many senators from those states worked behind the scenes to go along that pecker from ever getting a vote in the Senate. Next, the Business firm tried to expand to just 460 seats instead of 483, which would have caused only 2 states to lose a seat, simply that narrowly failed past 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 movie of the country'south population, claiming for case that many people had migrated to cities just temporarily during Globe War I merely would shortly return to rural areas. Others argued that not-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 also arguments over which method was all-time for apportioning seats, as one method tended to put slightly more seats in less populous states and the other put more than seats in more populous states.

The lack of consensus on how to reapportion the House meant that past the late 1920s, reapportionment had dragged on for nearly a decade and had all the makings of a constitutional crunch. "The issue began to come to a head every bit the 1928 ballot loomed," said Anderson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "Considering the realization was, we've got the Electoral Higher apportioned on the basis of the 1910 census, and if the popular vote and the balloter vote diverge, it'south because we didn't reapportion."

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Fortunately for electoral legitimacy, Republican Herbert Hoover won both the pop and balloter vote in the 1928 presidential election. Having served from 1921 to 1928 as secretary of commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau, he was especially cognizant of Congress'due south apportionment failure. In Apr 1929, Hoover called a special session of Congress, where 1 of the main focuses was circulation, and by June, legislation had passed both the House and Senate and was signed by Hoover. The law, the Circulation Human action of 1929, created what we know every bit the "automated" reapportionment procedure today. It capped the number of Firm seats at 435 and moved the responsibility of determining the seat count from Congress to the president — an early example of Congress giving away power to the executive branch.^half-dozen

But given the rancor surrounding reapportionment, the police force didn't come without serious consequences for representation. Specifically, information technology cut requirements that members be elected in single districts and that those districts be contiguous and meaty, serving relatively equal-sized populations. This meant a state that lost seats could now draw wildly disproportionate districts to proceed ability in more than rural parts of the state.

"Information technology essentially created massive malapportionment for the adjacent forty years," said Anderson. But, she stressed, this was done because it fabricated the law "politically palatable."

In fact, the law'southward lack of a population requirement helps explain why more than one-half of all members from rural districts backed information technology, fifty-fifty though nearly of the states that lost seats were based in the rural South and Midwest.⁷ These representatives knew their states might lose seats, but they hedged that their slower-growing or shrinking districts might not end upwardly on the chopping block now that the apportionment process didn't require districts to accept equal populations.

Later, to uphold the tenet of "one person, one vote," the Supreme Court would rule that congressional districts must be approximately equal in population, but that wouldn't happen until 1964. And fifty-fifty then, unequal representation in the Firm has persisted, largely because the size of the chamber hasn't budged despite massive growth in the U.S. population.

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The trouble with being stuck at 435

In 1910, the largest country, New York, had almost 9 meg more people than the smallest — that is, to the lowest degree populous — land, Nevada. Simply today, the largest state, California, has almost 39 million more people than the smallest, Wyoming.

This staggering gap makes it far more likely for states to end up with wildly unequal district populations thanks to the Constitution'southward requirement that each country have at least one congressional district. The Supreme Court requires districts to have equal populations, simply this applies just to the districts inside a state — non between states. And then even though the average House district volition have only over 760,000 people after this circular of reapportionment, each country's average district will vary quite a bit, especially as states become smaller in size.

Take the smallest and largest states with just one 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 average. Conversely, Delaware has almost 991,000 people, which leaves it underrepresented considering information technology isn't quite large enough to earn a 2d seat. Meanwhile, Montana has only nearly 95,000 more people than Delaware, only that'due south enough for the apportionment formula to eke out a second seat, meaning Montana will have 2 districts to Delaware'south one 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 beyond the state impossible, but at that place'south no question that increasing the size of the House would assist reduce how unequal district sizes amidst states have become. Expanding the Firm could too brand districts smaller, which in turn could assist with representation, as the average number of people living in a congressional district has grown by about 520,000 people from 1920 to 2022 — three times more than the total shift from 1790 to 1910.

In fact, the problem of representation in the U.S. is so bad that each member of the House represents far more people on boilerplate than legislators in nearly other large, developed — or developing — democracies. On the one hand, this is somewhat understandable given the U.S. has the third-largest population in the world subsequently China and Bharat, the latter of which besides happens to be the only republic with more people per representative than the U.South. But beyond India, other large democracies with more than 100 million people, like Brazil and Japan, offering their constituents far more representation than the U.S. Moreover, their lower legislative chambers are only somewhat bigger than the U.Due south. Firm.

The U.S. has a representation problem

Average population per seat in the lower legislative sleeping room or unicameral legislature in the U.Due south. and 30 other democracies

Land	Population (millions)	Seats	Avg. population per seat
India	ane,326.one	543	two,442,161
Usa*	331.1	435	761,169
Brazil	211.7	513	412,702
Colombia	49.1	172	285,377
Japan	125.v	465	269,909
Mexico	128.six	500	257,299
Argentina	45.5	257	176,962
Republic of korea	51.eight	300	172,784
Australia	25.5	151	168,652
Spain	l.0	350	142,902
South Africa	56.v	400	141,159
Federal republic of germany†	lxxx.two	598	134,046
French republic	67.8	577	117,588
Republic of chile	18.ii	155	117,334
Netherlands	17.3	150	115,203
Canada	37.vii	338	111,521
Britain	65.viii	650	101,171
Italy	62.4	630	99,052
Poland	38.3	460	83,222
Kingdom of belgium	11.seven	150	78,138
State of israel	8.7	120	72,296
Czech Republic	10.vii	200	53,512
Hungary	9.8	199	49,105
Austria	8.9	183	48,412
Portugal	ten.3	230	44,794
Switzerland	eight.four	200	42,020
New Zealand	four.ix	120	41,046
Greece	10.6	300	35,357
Denmark	5.ix	179	32,790
Sweden	10.2	349	29,233
Finland	five.vi	200	27,858

"Our congressional districts are only massive, there'south really nada else similar it," said Jonathan Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford University who studies political geography. "The scale of districts in Canada, the U.One thousand. and Australia is so much smaller … the U.S. is really an outlier in this."

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

Both he and Rodden noted that an expansion of the House could also increase 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's population. However, Rodden warned that opportunities to expand representation for minority groups could vary, especially in the South, where Black voters are oft over-concentrated in districts to ensure representation.

Adding seats to the House could accept electoral benefits, likewise. First, a growing Firm would brand it less likely that states lose representation in the reapportionment procedure. Under current weather, states with a shrinking population often lose seats, just this is true even of states where the population is growing.⁸ An expansion of the House would also assist reduce the Balloter Higher'southward bias toward small states, equally more populous states would pick up more than representatives, and therefore electoral votes in the Electoral College.⁹ And finally, a larger Firm could theoretically help reduce partisan gerrymandering. As Rodden told me, when you add more than and more seats, you converge on proportional representation at some betoken because the districts but get so small. Notwithstanding, he cautioned that line drawers could get pretty creative, so more districts might non ever issue in more proportional representation.¹⁰

Conspicuously, expanding the House has many potential upsides — many of them beneficial to democracy, besides — but, of course, a lot hinges on but how many seats would exist added. And on that bespeak at that place is no easy answer.

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How to expand the House

A number of ideas have emerged for how best to aggrandize the House. Some reformers have suggested a quondam, arbitrary prepare, like adding 50 seats. Others take argued for a more substantive overhaul, like resizing the House based on the population of the smallest state — oftentimes called the Wyoming rule, as Wyoming has occupied this position since 1990.

Simply there's actually a fairly straightforward solution that isn't too far off from what America used to do earlier — albeit unintentionally. Information technology'south known as the cube root police in political science, or the fact that the size of a country'south 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 oft the case. After all, at that place is no law that says countries' parliaments must exist the cube root of their population, yet they ofttimes are, equally the chart below shows. Of the xxx major democracies Shugart and his co-authors looked at alongside the U.S., a majority of them have legislatures very shut to — or adequately near — the cube root of their populations.

Accept Canada. Its lower legislative chamber, the House of Commons, has 338 seats, almost exactly in line with the cube root constabulary'due south expectation of 335 seats. This is in large part because Canada has frequently adjusted the chamber'south seat count to account for population growth. But other bigger democracies like Brazil and Japan also accept seat counts that fall fairly shut to the cube root of their corresponding populations. Of course, this isn't true of every democracy Shugart and his co-authors studied. Some countries like the U.S. fall well below the cube root of its population. And countries like Commonwealth of australia, Bharat and Israel are even more underrepresented than the U.Due south. in their legislatures.¹¹ It'due south also the case that some countries like Deutschland, Italy and the U.K. may actually be overrepresented in their lower chambers — for instance, the U.K.'s Firm of Commons has 650 seats, well more than the expected 404 seats.

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

In fact, it'southward a pattern the U.S. used to mostly follow until the size of the House was capped at 435 seats in 1929. But as the chart below shows, the House would take to grow to 692 seats to reverberate where the cube root constabulary expects representation in the U.South. to be now.

That would make the House nearly 60 percent larger than information technology is at present, so it'southward hard to imagine a one-fourth dimension increase of that telescopic. Shugart suggested a phased expansion over the side by side few decades, although he also didn't remember the Business firm necessarily had to get all the fashion to 692 seats — he just stressed that, co-ordinate 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 probable be steep opposition to expanding it because of some of the tradeoffs — and potential downsides — involved. For instance, a larger Business firm would by necessity mean a bigger government and more than spending. House members make $174,000 per year, and later on five 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 yous're talking near many millions or even billions of dollars.

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

As such, even more elections may exist effectively decided past 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 likely have an fifty-fifty easier time getting reelected than they currently do.

In addition, there simply isn't public support for expansion at this point. In 2018, 51 percent of Americans told the Pew Inquiry Center that the size of the House should stay the same, while only 28 percentage wanted to expand it (another eighteen percent actually wanted to shrink it). Moreover, members of Congress aren't wild about the idea, either. Legislation introduced in February by Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, a Democrat who died in April, aims to establish a bipartisan committee to examine the size of the Firm, among other things. But the neb has only four co-sponsors and looks unlikely to get anywhere.

Conspicuously, there are pros and cons to increasing the size of the House, merely 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 really doable. For instance, the Senate'south small-scale-state bias often gets a lot more attention, but whatever change to the Senate would require a ramble amendment whereas the size of the House could be contradistinct with a simple bill.

"It'south going to be difficult to increase the size of the House of Representatives; I'k nether no illusions," said Frederick of Bridgewater State Academy. Withal, it may exist fourth dimension for a modify given how diff districts have go between states and how underrepresented Americans are after more than 100 years of existence stuck at 435 House members. Said Frederick, "There's no doubt that a larger House with smaller constituency population size per district would improve 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 half-dozen are nonvoting members. The Commune of Columbia, Guam, the U.Due south. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa each take a delegate, while Puerto Rico has a resident commissioner.

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

3. Throughout this piece, we'll often refer to census years as the time when the House was reapportioned for simplicity's sake. Simply historically, Congress has commonly passed apportionment acts in the yr or 2 after the census was released, but still in time for elections ahead of the next Congress.

4. Upon statehood, Congress added 2 seats for New Mexico and 1 for Arizona in 1912 during the 62nd Congress, which had already passed the Apportionment Human action of 1911. This brought the total number of Business firm seats to 394 earlier 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 betoken that just a handful of states lost any seats in the v apportionments from 1870 to 1910.

6. This is why even now the secretary of commerce reports apportionment figures to the president, who then transmits that data to Congress.

7. In total, 21 states lost seats equally part of the reapportionment process, and nigh of them were in the South or Midwest. Meanwhile, the eleven states that gained seats were industrial states like New York and Michigan and fast-growing states mostly in the West.

8. Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania all grew about 2 percent between 2010 and 2020, for example, but all 3 states even so lost seats in the 2022 apportionment process.

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

10. In a 2013 newspaper that Rodden co-authored, he institute that the more districts were added to Florida's map, the more proportional the partisan separate became across those districts, although Republicans still retained an advantage given Democrats' overconcentration in urban areas. But he didn't discover this pattern everywhere. For case, 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 Commonwealth of australia and India. Israel has a unicameral legislature.

Geoffrey Skelley is an elections annotator at FiveThirtyEight. @geoffreyvs

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