BLUE STATE BLUES: People flocking to low-tax states could swing future elections.

The new 2017 Census estimates can be used to give us a year-over-year change from 2016 or, alternatively, estimates can be based on a longer-trend line. The data gives a nice summary of estimates for congressional seat changes after the 2020 Census.

The state with the largest downside risk appears to be Illinois, which will lose one congressional seat in 2020 and is in danger of being the only state in the U.S. to lose two seats.

Illinois suffered the largest net population loss of any state in the past year, and due to that loss, it was overtaken by Pennsylvania this year as the fifth-largest state in the country. Major tax increases passed in 2017 will certainly not help this downward economic spiral.

The 2017 Census estimates also contain some troubling news for the nation’s largest state, California. While the 2010 Census was the first in state history to not add an additional congressional seat, 2020 could be worse for the Golden State.

Some current projections show high-tax California is on the bubble to actually lose a congressional seat in 2020 — a shocking development for a state that gained seven seats between 1980 and 1990 alone.

For history buffs, it is possible that high-tax Rhode Island will lose one of its two congressional seats in 2020. That will be the first time since 1789 that Rhode Island only has one congressional seat.

Meanwhile, another state with extremely high tax burdens, New York, is set to lose yet another seat in 2020, the eighth census in a row that the Empire State has forfeited seats.

They’d rather rule over the ruins than reform.