He Called a Projection a Fact

Dan Bongino, September 22. Facebook’s title on the clip was 679,000 views and 16,000 reactions. The caption says Democrats are trapped in an electoral nightmare that will keep them from the presidency for a long time, and that the math doesn’t lie. On the show he is more careful for one sentence and then he isn’t. If Republicans get past the 2026 midterm and hold the presidency in 2028, he says, he is not sure Democrats will have a real chance at the White House or the House for a long time. Then he puts two posts on the screen and closes with “that’s just math. It’s not an opinion. It’s fact.”

The first post is Stephen Moore, September 21. “The exodus from blue states will reshape the Electoral College. California is projected to lose FOUR House seats after 2030. Texas is projected to gain FOUR, and Florida TWO. Americans continue to vote with their feet.” Bongino adds the part the census actually does: a House seat is an electoral vote. Four fewer for California is four fewer in the college. He then calls the Texas four and the Florida two “likely Republican seats.”

That half is a real argument. Apportionment is population, and the House is stuck at 435, so a seat that shows up in Texas is a seat that came from somewhere else. The published 2030 estimates line up with Moore on the two big numbers. Jonathan Cervas’s table has California going from 52 seats to 48 and Texas from 38 to 42. The American Redistricting Project has the same four and four. Florida is the one they don’t share. Those tables have Florida going from 28 to 31, a gain of three, not two. One seat, and it is still an estimate. A state on the edge of these models can hold or lose a district on a count smaller than a small city. Today those three states are worth 54, 40, and 30 electoral votes. Moore’s card would make them 50, 44, and 32. The versions with Florida at three make it 33. Either way the college moves toward the states people are moving to. It does not move by a number anyone has counted yet.

The second post is Grover Norquist, and this is where “fact” breaks. He writes that the 2032 census will move another 10 congressional seats and electoral votes from blue states to red states, and that in 2042 another 10 will move. “In 15 years add twenty congressmen to the Republican side and remove 20 congressmen from the Democrat tally. (ditto with electoral college.)” There is no apportionment table that says that. The next census is one reapportionment, the one Moore was talking about, and it is not a transfer of ten party seats. The one after that is the 2040 census. Nobody has run it. A House seat is also not a party. California losing a district does not delete a Democrat. Texas gaining one does not print a Republican. What it prints is a district, drawn by whoever holds the legislature, filled by whoever wins it.

The people leaving are the fact. The direction of the next map is the fair inference, and Bongino’s “likely” is the right word for the Texas seats. Twenty Democrats subtracted and twenty Republicans added, across two censuses that have not happened, is not math. It is the sentence after the math.