Republicans will hold their largest majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in decades thanks to the 2014 elections. Michael Barone reminds Washington Examiner readers that the composition of this GOP majority will be substantially different in significant ways.

[T]here will be 247 Republicans in the House in the 114th Congress — one more than was elected to the House in the 80th Congress in 1946. It’s the most Republican House since the one elected in 1928, a year when very few of today’s voters were alive.

But while the party numbers are almost precisely the same in the Houses elected this year and 68 years ago, the composition of the two parties’ caucuses (the Republicans call theirs a conference) is sharply different.

One reason is that the reapportionment of House seats following the seven censuses from 1950 to 2010 has shifted many seats from the Northeast, Midwest and Mississippi Valley to Texas, South Atlantic and Western states.

Altogether, 100 seats have been transferred from 27 states to 17 other states. Only six small states have the same number of seats as they did in 1946. The big losers have been New York (down 18 seats), Pennsylvania (down 15), Illinois (down 8) and Ohio (down 7). The big gainers have been California (up 30), Florida (up 21) and Texas (up 15).

The House Republican Conference that assembled in January 1947 was dominated by members from New York (28), Pennsylvania (28), Illinois (20) and Ohio (19). Most came from courthouse towns and sought to roll back the New Deal. They provided the impetus behind the Taft-Hartley Act, which limited the power of labor unions — a law that passed despite Harry Truman’s veto and is still in effect today. …

… The divisions in the 114th House, in contrast, reflect contemporary divisions. The House Republican Conference is tilted toward the South, but not as heavily as Democrats were in 1947. Of its 247 members, 114 are from Southern states and its largest state delegations are from Texas (25) and Florida (217). Republicans’ margin in Southern seats is 114-38. Most Southern Democrats are from black- or Hispanic-majority districts or those with a Northern cultural flavor (South Florida, Northern Virginia, Austin).

But Democrats lead in Northern seats by only 150-133. Northern Republicans come mainly from suburbs and exurbs, not small towns as in 1947. They tend to represent growing areas rather than those that are losing steam.