United States congressional apportionment in the context of "115th United States Congress"

The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and minor islands. Both the states and the United States as a whole are each sovereign jurisdictions. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows states to exercise all powers of government not delegated to the federal government. Each state has its own constitution and government. All states and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each state elects two senators, while representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census.

Each state is entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that elects the president of the United States, equal to the total of representatives and senators in Congress from that state. The federal district does not have representatives in the Senate, but has a non-voting delegate in the House, and it is entitled to electors in the Electoral College. Congress can admit more states, but it cannot create a new state from territory of an existing state or merge two or more states into one without the consent of all states involved. Each new state is admitted on an equal footing with the existing states.

In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years for the sole purpose of voting for the president and vice president in the presidential election. This process is described in Article Two of the Constitution. The number of electors from each state is equal to that state's congressional delegation which is the number of senators (two) plus the number of Representatives for that state. Each state appoints electors using legal procedures determined by its legislature. Federal office holders, including senators and representatives, cannot be electors. Additionally, the Twenty-third Amendment granted the federal District of Columbia three electors (bringing the total number from 535 to 538). A simple majority of electoral votes (270 or more) is required to elect the president and vice president. If no candidate achieves a majority, a contingent election is held by the House of Representatives, to elect the president, and by the Senate, to elect the vice president.

The states and the District of Columbia hold a statewide or district-wide popular vote on Election Day in November to choose electors based upon how they have pledged to vote for president and vice president, with some state laws prohibiting faithless electors. All states except Maine and Nebraska use a party block voting, or general ticket method, to choose their electors, meaning all their electors go to one winning ticket. Maine and Nebraska choose one elector per congressional district and two electors for the ticket with the highest statewide vote. The electors meet and vote in December, and the inaugurations of the president and vice president take place in January.

John Cabell Breckinridge (January 16, 1821 – May 17, 1875) was an American politician who served as the 14th vice president of the United States, with President James Buchanan, from 1857 to 1861. Assuming office at the age of 36, Breckinridge is the youngest vice president in U.S. history. He was also the Southern Democratic candidate in the 1860 presidential election, losing to antislavery Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln.

Breckinridge was born near Lexington, Kentucky, to a prominent local family. After serving as a noncombatant during the Mexican–American War, he was elected as a Democrat to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1849, where he took a pro-slavery stance. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1851, he allied with Stephen A. Douglas in support of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. After reapportionment in 1854 made his re-election unlikely, he declined to run for another term. He was nominated for vice president at the 1856 Democratic National Convention to balance a ticket headed by James Buchanan. The Democrats won the election, but Breckinridge had little influence with Buchanan, and as presiding officer of the Senate, could not express his opinions in debates. He joined Buchanan in supporting the proslavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, which led to a split in the Democratic Party. In 1859, he was elected to succeed Senator John J. Crittenden at the end of Crittenden's term in 1861.

This is a list of individuals serving in the United States House of Representatives (as of December 4, 2025, the 119th Congress). The membership of the House comprises 435 seats for representatives from the 50 states, apportioned by population, as well as six seats for non-voting delegates from U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. As of December 4, 2025, there are 433 representatives and 2 vacancies.

The 116th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives. It convened in Washington, D.C., on January 3, 2019, and ended on January 3, 2021, during the final two years of Donald Trump's first presidency. Senators elected to regular terms in 2014 finished their terms in this Congress, and House seats were apportioned based on the 2010 census.

In the November 2018 midterm elections, the Democratic Party won a new majority in the House, while the Republican Party increased its majority in the Senate. Consequently, this was the first split Congress since the 113th Congress of 2013–2015, and the first Republican Senate–Democratic House split since the 99th Congress of 1985–1987. This Congress was the youngest incoming class by mean age, compared to the previous three the incoming class of freshman representatives, and the most demographically diverse in history.

Congressional districts in the United States are electoral divisions for the purpose of electing members of the United States House of Representatives. The number of voting seats within the House of Representatives is currently set at 435, with each one representing an average of 761,169 people following the 2020 United States census. The number of voting seats has applied since 1913, excluding a temporary increase to 437 after the admissions of Alaska and Hawaii. The total number of state members is capped by the Reapportionment Act of 1929. In addition, each of the five inhabited U.S. territories and the federal district of Washington, D. C., sends a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives.

The Bureau of the Census conducts a constitutionally mandated decennial census whose figures are used to determine the number of congressional districts to which each state is entitled, in a process called "apportionment". The 2022 elections were the first to be based on the congressional districts which were defined based on the 2020 United States census.