Washington DC – The US Census Bureau is poised to release much-awaited data key to the redistricting game. But what does this demographic information have to do with electoral map-drawing, and who has the advantage going into the 2022 midterms?

Every ten years, the US Census Bureau releases new data gathered from surveys of all participating American households.

While information on household size, location, and demographics may not seem very interesting at first glance, it turns out the release of Census data has big implications for US politics over the next decade.

The next batch of Census data, set for release today, is generating a lot of buzz with the 2022 midterms rapidly approaching. The data will be used to decide how congressional districts are drawn for the upcoming elections and the rest of the decade beyond.

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There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives, and Census data determines how many of that number each state will get for the coming 10 years. It also influences how maps are drawn within states, as each congressional district should represent a roughly equal population size.

But things get messy from that point onwards, as many states allow partisan politicians rather than independent commissions to draw their electoral maps. As might naturally be expected, those politicians often engineer maps in a way that best benefits their own party members' election.

While both sides participate in partisan gerrymandering, as it is called, Republicans over the last ten years have heavily dominated the redistricting game, and they are expected to have an advantage again this year.

With the Republicans within a five-member margin of regaining control of the US House, the stakes are particularly high in 2022.

Part of Republicans' advantage was sealed in April, when the Census Bureau released apportionment data for all 50 states.

The big winners were Republican-controlled states like Florida, North Carolina, and Texas, which gained two seats. Meanwhile, Democratic-controlled states like New York and California each lost a seat.

Thursday's numbers will be more specific, providing the detailed information on a block-by-block basis as required for the redistricting process.

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Even small changes in map lines can have huge impacts, delivering the party in control the votes it needs to secure the district.

According to the Associated Press, Republicans will lead the redistricting process in 20 states accounting for 187 House seats, while Democrats will manage redistricting in just eight states accounting for 75 seats.

Advocates for fairer map-drawing practices are concerned that the condensed time frame for redistricting, due to delays in information delivery resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, will afford citizens much less opportunity to provide their own input in the process.

But there's still hope for Democrats in several key states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which now have Democratic governors to counterbalance GOP-led legislatures. In other important states, like Ohio, citizen-led boards will conduct redistricting, which takes some of the partisan heat out of the process.

There is also the chance that Dems could regain seats by filing lawsuits against instances of allegedly unfair gerrymandering, as they did in several districts over the last decade.