Illinois will lose one congressional seat based on the 2020 Census data that the federal agency recently published.
Based on the 2020 data, the state's population declined enough to cut a seat in the House of Representatives.
"What would you suggest to Gov. [J.B.] Pritzker to 'turn our state around?' Please be specific and constructive," Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Champaign) posed the question in an April 27 Facebook post.
Illinois will be left with 17 seats from its original 18 seats in the U.S. House. According to The News-Gazette, Illinois has lost a congressional representative in eight of the nine last decades during each census. Illinois peaked at 27 seats from 1910 until 1940 when the decline began to take place.
In an unrelated news release, Pritzker said that he was "concerned" about residents migrating out of state, despite the population having not decreased to the extent some had anticipated. Pritzker also commented that the declining population has been happening "for more than a decade."
“We’ve got to turn that around,” Pritzker said, The News-Gazette reported. “That’s something that unfortunately before I became governor was a bit set in clay, if not stone. And now, we’re working very hard to make sure we’re going [in] the right direction.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's release April 26, Illinois has a total population of a little more than 12.8 million people. This is a 0.1% drop in comparison to the last census taken in 2010.
Pritzker attributed the population loss to college students deciding not to return to school during the pandemic.
While the General Assembly is tasked with redrawing legislative lines for mapping, the debate on a bill to allow the Illinois Supreme Court to create a 16-person appointment panel to create the redistricting map is ongoing. The deadline for redistricting maps is June 30, according to Illinois Policy.
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