By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — New York state is poised to lose at least one seat in Congress Tuesday when the Census reveals the latest population counts.
Every ten years, Census data is used to reshuffle Congressional seats so they reflect the most current state population counts.
Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a political consulting firm specializing in census data analysis, said that experts are divided about whether the state will lose two seats or one.
"It’s either-or," agreed Tim Storey, an expert in redistricting with the non-partisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
Queens College sociologist Andrew A. Beveridge, who specializes in demographics, said that if the state loses a single seat, as he expects, there will likely be little-to-no impact on the city, since so much of the state's population loss has happened upstate.
But if the New York loses two seats, he said voters should brace themselves for complication, since districts from north to south will likely need to be redrawn larger to make up for the loss.
"The redistricting is going to be a big brouhaha," he said.
Detailed information about precisely how populations have shifted across the states that will be used to re-draw lines won't be released until February or March, Brace said.
But experts predict that lawsuits are likely.
"Litigation is inevitable with both the census data and redistricting," Storey said.
