The Census Bureau will announce later this month that the New York Congressional delegation will shrink to the smallest it has been in 200 years, continuing to erode the state’s clout in Washington.

The 435 seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned every decade on the basis of population. As a result of the steady tilt to the South and West, New York’s 29-member delegation will lose at least one seat and possibly two, continuing an inexorable slide that began after World War II. The loss of two seats appears to be a little less likely because migration from the Northeast lagged during the recession.

Yet the loss of even one seat will make the New York delegation that convenes in 2013 the smallest numerically since 1810, when James Madison was president and fewer than a million people lived in the state. New Yorkers held 27 of the nation’s 181 Congressional seats in 1813.

The delegation peaked at 45 of the total 435 seats in the 1940s.

Proportionately, the New York delegation, which accounted for 15 percent of the Congress in 1813, will be barely 6 percent in 2013.

Whatever modest population growth New York State has recorded since 2000 pales in comparison to that of a number of states in the South and West. In the state, growth has been driven by New York City and several suburban counties, which means they are expected to gain Congressional and legislative seats at the expense of upstate areas.

Which seats are eliminated, of course, depends on a number of variables, the most important being which party controls the Legislature. (Right now, the Democrats comfortably lead the State Assembly while control of the State Senate is unclear, because of races that are still undecided.) Also, lawmakers are under pressure from good government groups to relinquish control over redistricting, ceding it to a nonpartisan commission.

When population shifts between 1990 and 2000 resulted in the loss of two seats for New York, Democrats and Republicans compromised, eliminating one district belonging to a Democrat in Buffalo and one held by a Republican in the Hudson Valley.

Despite Republican gains in November, when the new Congress convenes in January, Democrats will still dominate the delegation, with Republicans occupying just eight or nine seats, depending on the outcome of a Suffolk County race.

The logical region for eliminating districts is upstate, where old cities and towns are emptying out. Moreover, for legislative (but not Congressional) reapportionment, a new law requires state prison inmates to be counted in the urban Democratic districts where they last lived instead of the rural Republican districts where they are incarcerated.

“If New York State loses one seat, most of that loss will come upstate,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College sociologist, who analyzed the population shifts for The New York Times. “If it loses two seats, then the older suburbs downstate will also lose, while New York City and the fast-growing outer ring suburbs will more likely hold their own.”

Districts are supposed to be roughly equal in population. If the delegation is reduced by one seat, each of the remaining 28 Congressional districts should have an average of at least 700,000 residents. Under that formulation, according to Dr. Beveridge’s analysis, two upstate districts, the 27th and the 28th, will each fall about 100,000 people short. If the state loses two seats, those two districts and five others upstate with too few people will need to be reconfigured.

The 27th Congressional District, on Lake Erie, is represented by Brian Higgins, who was first elected in 2004. The 28th, abutting Lake Ontario, is represented by Louise M. Slaughter, who has been in office for 24 years. Both are Democrats.

One approach would combine those districts with one or more of the upstate seats won last month by Republicans.

“Usually, it is the newer members whose districts get cut out and are forced to run against another incumbent,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, an election law expert.

The governor-elect, Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has signaled his support for a nonpartisan commission to oversee redistricting. But it is far from clear that legislators motivated by self-preservation will give up the coveted power to redraw district lines, even though a majority publicly pledged to New York Uprising, a civic coalition organized by former Mayor Edward I. Koch, that they would support an independent redistricting process.

And with legislative districts also facing revisions, state lawmakers have their own futures to think of, too.

“One dynamic to watch is do Senate Republicans worry about themselves and leave congressmen on float or do they hunker down?” said Bruce N. Gyory, a political consultant.

State Senator Martin Malavé Dilan, a Brooklyn Democrat who is a co-chairman of the Legislative Advisory Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, has convened a public hearing for Tuesday on redistricting.

(Source: NY Times)