by Misty Severi
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Monday his committee has received information showing the United States’ Census Bureau in 2020 miscalculated the number of Americans in a way that cost Republicans multiple House seats.
Comer claimed the basic count was biased against Republicans because the bureau made estimations instead of doing a physical count during the COVID-19 pandemic, and estimated high in Democratic areas like major cities and underestimated in suburban areas known to be more friendly to Republicans.
“The basic count was miscounted grossly in the last census, to the tune of costing the Republicans anywhere from four to five congressional seat,” Comer said on the “Just The News, No Noise” TV show. “The fact that we lost [is] because the Census Bureau was biased. If you go back to when the census was taken, the last time it was during COVID, no one knocked on anybody’s doors because of COVID. So they ended up estimating.
“They overestimated Democrats in the Democratic areas, which are the urban, rundown communities across America, and they undercounted all the suburban areas, which are the Republicans [fastest] growing areas,” he added.
Comer said California, New York and Rhode Island should have lost more House seats than they did and that Florida and Texas should have gained at least one new member of Congress because of an exodus during the pandemic.
“This was a census that really messed up, and it erred on the side of Democrats and against Republicans, and I hope that that mistake is not made again,” Comer said. “Now we’ve got a one-vote majority in the House of Representatives. If we had a five-vote majority, where we didn’t have to worry that much about Thomas Massie, then we would have probably been able to have passed a lot more of President Trump’s agenda.”
Comer said he is committed to making sure the next census count is more accurate, so inaccurate reporting by the bureau is not done again.
“You know, the whole issue of whether you count illegals or not, that’s a whole other issue,” he said. “What we’re focused on, I’m focusing on is making sure we get an accurate count, because that will be a significant improvement … Â Just get an accurate count. We didn’t have that the last time, and it was off by a lot.”
Since President Trump returned to office, six states have undergone redistricting efforts to remake their congressional maps: California, Texas, Utah, North Carolina, and Missouri. Additionally, Ohio redrew its congressional map, but it is legally obligated to do so, while the other states are not.
Texas’ congressional map is expected to give Republicans an additional five seats, while Missouri’s congressional map is expected to give Republicans an additional seat. On the other side, California’s new congressional map is supposed to give Democrats an additional five seats.
The congressional maps from Texas and California both survived legal challenges.
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Misty Severi is a reporter for Just the News.  Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
Comer What about Fixing the census & state representation NOW for ’26 midterms!!!