MIAMI — A handful of presidential battleground states experienced a population explosion over the past year, altering the landscape in at least three key states that stand to play a pivotal role in the 2020 election.

Those population shifts are poised to have a tangible impact in 2020 — with demographic shifts cementing Florida’s premier swing-state status, vaulting Arizona onto the list of 2020 swing states and perhaps putting Nevada further out of reach for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

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Both the year-over-year changes and the longer-term trends this decade point to a transformed electoral map in 2020 — shaped both by population shifts and the Trump-enhanced realignment that has come to define modern politics. The population shifts could have even more material impacts after 2020, when the decennial reapportionment process will remake the House of Representatives in 2022 and the Electoral College for the 2024 presidential election.

New Census Bureau estimates released Wednesday of the fastest-growing states between 2017 and 2018 report Nevada is roughly tied for first for the greatest population growth by percentage over the past year (with Idaho, at 2.1 percent). But right behind were Arizona — where Democrats won a Senate election last month for the first time since 1988 — at 1.7 percent, and Florida, which is already the nation’s largest swing state and grew at a 1.5-percent clip over the past year.

While Florida was fifth in growth rate, more U.S. residents moved there than to any other state over the past year. It has the third-highest population of 21 million, the second-highest number of total new residents and 132,000 residents who came from elsewhere in the country.

Put it all together and Florida is a political powder keg heading into 2020, according to outgoing state GOP chairman Blaise Ingoglia.

“More people means more campaigning, more money, more advertising, more of everything,” Ingoglia, a state representative, said.

The numbers — especially the net domestic migration data — could also mean more pressure for Democrats, who saw their hopes of saving Sen. Bill Nelson and winning the governor’s mansion for the first time in 20 years dashed by historic turnout for Republicans that was likely fueled by a wave of retirees from the Midwest and parts of the Northeast.

“The more older, whiter voters who move here from higher-tax, higher-regulation states, the more we win,” Ingoglia said.

The new census data released Wednesday don’t show the race, age and home state of the new U.S. residents picked up by Florida last year, but they do show that New York lost the most residents (48,510) and Illinois the second-highest number (45,116) between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018.

Puerto Rico continued to hemorrhage people, losing nearly 130,000 people, or 3.9 percent of its population.

“Puerto Rico has seen a steady decline in population over the last decade,” Sandra Johnson, demographer and statistician for the Census Bureau, said in a written statement. “Hurricane Maria in September of 2017 further impacted that loss, both before and during the recovery period.”

A disproportionate number of hurricane evacuees moved to Florida from the island, and Democrats hoped they would be a crucial component in fueling a blue wave. But Puerto Rican turnout appeared to lag behind the statewide average — and Republicans ultimately lost only one of five statewide races, for agriculture commissioner.

“The big issue is they left the island, and they came here — but they either didn’t register to vote or not enough of them voted,” said Matt Isbell, a Florida Democratic data analyst.

“We’ve been getting a ton of migration from the Midwest especially, and a lot of them fit the profile of Republican voters,” Isbell said. “And it’s balancing out the growth with Democrats.”

Though demoralized by the statewide losses last year, Democrats have more hope in Florida for 2020. Democratic voters in the state tend to show in greater force in presidential elections — although 2016 was an exception — and this year Democrats came closer than ever before in statewide midterm elections; three of the races for state office were so close they went to recounts. Democrats also picked up a net of two congressional seats, five state House seats and one state Senate seat.

Population growth and demographic change has also roiled the existing political landscape in the West. In Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema notched the party’s first Senate victory in three decades, and Democrats will actually control a narrow majority of the state’s House seats — five out of nine — in the new Congress. And Democrats are already on a winning streak in Nevada, where changing demographics have propelled the party to victories that include three consecutive presidential elections, two straight Senate races, three out of four congressional seats and unified control of state government starting in 2019.

In Texas, where Democrat Beto O’Rourke came up short in his bid to unseat GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, the closeness of the race reflected both O’Rourke’s strong campaign, and the population growth in the state. In many of the state’s most competitive House races — Democrats picked up two seats in Texas last month — excitement around O’Rourke and Democrats, along with the population boom, led to roughly the same number of votes cast in the midterms as in the 2016 presidential election.

Florida is currently the largest Electoral College prize seriously contested by the two parties, 29 electoral votes, trailing only California (55 electoral votes) and Texas (38 electoral votes). And while those Electoral College numbers are fixed through the 2020 election, Florida is poised to become even more influential in the next decade.

According to a POLITICO analysis, Florida would pick up an additional House district if the end-of-decade reapportionment were conducted today, the new Census Bureau data suggest. But, if the current trends hold for the next two years, Florida could end up adding two seats instead of one, bringing it to 29 House districts beginning in 2022 — and 31 electoral votes starting in 2024.

The states that would gain House seats if reapportionment were held today are all in the South and West: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and Texas, which would gain two seats. (Texas could end up with three more seats if it keeps growing rapidly over the next two years.) And the states that would lose seats — Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia — form an almost-contiguous band that stretches from the Northeast through the Midwest.

Other states on the cusp of losing a House seat (and thus a vote in the Electoral College) in the next decade, if the current trends continue: California, Ohio and Alabama. If California loses a House seat — for the first time ever — it would signal the end to an era of almost meteoric growth, particularly in light of the continued, national migration to the Sun Belt.

Shepard and Bland reported from Arlington, Va.

Outgoing White House chief of staff John Kelly tried and failed to bring a military discipline to the West Wing. Mick Mulvaney doesn’t plan to try.

Mulvaney will approach the job far differently than Kelly, according to six sources close to the Trump aide and Republicans close to the White House. Most notably, he intends to give Trump more leeway to act as he chooses — a recognition that trying to control Trump is a futile approach.

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Mulvaney will adopt a much larger role in politics and messaging, and plans to take a more laissez faire approach to some quirks of the Trump White House that irked Kelly — like non-essential staffers attending meetings, or the president frequently reaching out to longtime friends, Republican lawmakers and advisers for advice or dinners in the White House residence.

At one point, Mulvaney told to an ally he thought Kelly did a disservice to the president by constantly saying “no.” “I did not take that as a sign that Mick would never push back, but he definitely had a feeling that Kelly pushed back too often and did not help the president fulfill his agenda,” said the source close to Mulvaney.

The result could be an even more freewheeling White House.

Already, Mulvaney has spent the last few days at the White House, shadowing Kelly as he goes about his day and meeting behind closed doors with top communications staff like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And Mulvaney is expected to travel to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to be with the president for a few days over the holidays.

To back him up when he begins in January, Mulvaney plans to bring with him to the White House four staffers from the Office of Management and Budget, which he’s overseen for the past two years, including his well-liked chief of staff, Emma Doyle, and deputy chief of staff, Daniel Hanlon, according to an internal OMB email obtained by POLITICO. Doyle is expected to serve as deputy chief of staff, though no formal announcement has been made.

His scheduler and body man will also accompany him to the West Wing.

“Emma helped Mick staff and run two agencies, and Dan has been with him for eight years. They’re going to the West Wing to help translate Mick’s style to the staff and vice versa, not to invade the place and start firing people,” said a source familiar with Mulvaney’s plans.

Initially, Kelly tried to reign in Trump’s long-standing habits and make sure conversations, calls and appointments ran through him during his first few months in the White House, though Kelly insisted he wasn’t trying to constrain the president. Eventually, Kelly backed down from trying to instill such military-style discipline in a White House that has largely resisted it.

“My guess is that Mulvaney will be slightly more tolerant of people coming to meetings when they should not be there,” said one Republican close to the White House. “He is a less of a disciplinarian than Kelly.”

That applies, too, to the Trump kids, including senior aides Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. The president’s daughter and son-in-law frequently clashed with Kelly, who reportedly derided them as two New Yorkers “playing government.” One source close to Mulvaney stressed that he would likely not stand in the kids’ way and viewed part of his new job as acting chief of staff as trying to help other aides accomplish what they’d like to get done.

A former administration official scoffed when asked about that approach: “Everyone gets along with the kids in the beginning.”

On messaging, aides expect Mulvaney to play a much more public role than Kelly. The four-star general shied away from media appearances and tended to only wade into policy on discrete matters like immigration or military affairs. But as a former House member, Mulvaney feels comfortable in front of the camera and interacting with reporters. He will likely appear more frequently on Sunday news programs and even show up at the White House press podium, as he did during the brief government shutdown last winter.

“Mulvaney definitely has conservative credentials, but he also brings close knowledge of the Hill and its politics. He can also clearly communicate the administration’s message to the public. That will all be important for Trump,” said Paul Winfree, former deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy and the director of budget policy at the White House, whose time in the administration overlapped with Mulvaney’s.

The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Mulvaney entered the Trump orbit during the presidential transition, recommended by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and the conservative Heritage Foundation for the slot at the OMB. The first time Mulvaney met Trump personally was in Trump Tower during the transition for a 15-minute interview, said another source close to Mulvaney.

Trump did most of the talking at that session, and Mulvaney landed the job.

Eliana Johnson contributed to this report.

To hear retiring Speaker Paul Ryan tell it, he presided over one of the most productive Congresses in recent history. Tax cuts. Opioids legislation. A fortified military budget.

But as the Wisconsin Republican heads for the exits, the reality is he will be remembered with a far more controversial legacy.

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Ryan long fashioned himself as the moral compass of the party of Lincoln, a politician who tried to appeal to policymakers’ better angels. Yet as President Donald Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image, Ryan largely stifled his criticism of Trump in hopes of passing some of his top legislative priorities — what critics have referred to as his “pact with the devil.”

Ryan rebuked Trump on the campaign trail in 2016 for remarks he deemed “racist” or policy proposals — like Trump’s Muslim ban — that he believed were unconstitutional and went against the very fabric of American society. But Ryan muted his pushback the moment Trump won the presidency. When Trump tweeted controversial comments, Ryan said he hadn’t seen them. Even in the wake of the disastrous 2018 midterm election, when Trump taunted moderate House Republicans who lost their campaigns, Ryan said nothing to defend his members.

“He made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump — and he’s going to be remembered for that,” said Wisconsin conservative commentator Charlie Sykes, a former Ryan fan who became a critic in recent years. “I understand the prudential decision he made to cooperate with Trump, but I don’t think history is going to look back kindly on that.”

Some of Ryan’s longtime cheerleaders wonder whether it was worth it. While Ryan, a fiscal hawk and former Budget Committee chairman, ushered through the largest tax overhaul since 1986, his longtime goal of reforming entitlements splattered on the cutting room floor.

What’s more, the budget deficit under his watch as speaker ballooned from less than $438 billion in fiscal 2015 to $779 billion this year. A Forbes headline earlier this year read “Paul Ryan’s Most Lasting Legacy: Permanent Trillion-Dollar Deficits.”

Ryan’s allies argue it’s not his fault. The speaker unsuccessfully tried to convince Trump and Senate Republican leaders to tackle Medicare and Social Security reform during a critical Camp David strategy session in early 2017, but he was rebuffed. And a dramatic restructuring of Medicaid died when Senate Republicans failed to take up and pass Ryan’s Obamacare repeal plan last year.

Ryan allies also argue that he didn’t have a choice but to curb his criticism of the president if he wanted to remain speaker. His own members scolded him for criticizing Trump following the release of the “Access Hollywood” video, where Trump bragged about groping women’s private parts in the fall of 2016.

Indeed, when Trump won the presidential election, the hard-line Freedom Caucus stood at the ready to push Ryan out of office for jabbing Trump on the campaign trail. The only reason Trump kept him around was because Vice President Mike Pence and other pro-Ryan Republicans argued in favor of having a true legislative tactician and wonk shepherding his priorities through a convoluted Congress.

Should Ryan have forcefully criticized Trump during his presidency, the leader of the party could have come after him, Ryan’s allies say.

“That’s the toughest job in American politics,” said Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), an Illinois Republican who lost in the midterm election.

Retired GOP Rep. Charlie Dent, a centrist and frequent Trump critic, agreed: “Should he have spoken up more about the president? My answer would be yes…But I always felt Paul Ryan was in a tough spot. He had to deal with the rearguard action, like [ex-Speaker John] Boehner did. … He wouldn’t haven’t have gotten the support of his members.”

Despite the criticism against him, Ryan is loved by many of his colleagues. In a statement for this story, in fact, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “History will remember Paul as a leader but I will remember him also as a friend, and as an example of what’s right in our politics.”

“Paul’s service to our country is a story of integrity and results,” the California Republican said. “He has fought for his constituents for over two decades, inspired our party to embrace an ambitious conservative policy agenda, and led Congress in passing reforms that have charted a stronger path forward for our country.”

Ryan’s office likewise defends his legacy, citing tax reform as well as an expansive criminal justice overhaul that’s set to be signed into law, among other achievements.

“After years of doubt, years of the cynics saying it could not be done, we achieved the first major overhaul of our tax code in 31 years,” Ryan said during a farewell address Wednesday. “This is something I worked on my entire adult life, and it is something that will help to improve people’s lives for a long time to come.”

Ryan says he’s done with politics. But some wonder if the 48-year-old might return someday and run for president.

The Republican Party is currently Trump’s. He has upended Ryan’s Jack Kemp-inspired conservativism in favor of his own populist vision. Of course, the pendulum could eventually swing back toward the party Ryan fell in love with. And some believe Ryan could — and should — return to office when that happens.

However, part of Ryan’s legacy will be that he didn’t stand up to Trump. When Trump refused to admonish white supremacists after a rally in Charlottesville, Va. led to a woman’s death in August 2017, Ryan condemned extremists and “moral ambiguity” but did not call the president out by name nor ask his chairmen to hold hearings on the rise in violent extremism. When Trump turned his ire on Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Ryan merely declared that the special counsel should continue to do his job.

Ryan has spent nearly half his life working or serving in Congress, which did provide him a unique perspective on the institution. He first came to Washington as an intern in college. In 1992, he landed a job as a staff assistant for former Sen. Robert Kasten (R-Wis.), working as a waiter at Tortilla Coast, a Capitol Hill restaurant, as well as a personal trainer to supplement his income.

Following Kasten’s loss in 1992, Ryan got a job at Empower America, a conservative think tank run by Kemp, a former Republican congressman from New York. Kemp was an ideological mentor for Ryan, a touchstone that Ryan returned to over and over again during his tenure in Congress, even after Kemp’s death in 2009.

In 1995, Ryan got a job working for former Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) before returning to Wisconsin two years later to prepare for a run for Congress. Ryan won his House seat the following year, and he remained in the House for 20 years. He served as chairman of the Budget and Ways and Means committees and was Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election.

Beyond his awkward relationship with Trump, Ryan’s tenure as speaker is marred by battles with the right. While many conservatives cheered the day he took the gavel following Boehner’s ouster, the most hard-line members of his conference quickly decided he was no different than the Ohio Republican they just drove out of Washington.

Freedom Caucus members regularly complained that his legislation wasn’t conservative enough and that leadership had a top-down approach to legislating. And when Trump took office, they found a way to go around Ryan — they appealed to Trump directly. This undercut Ryan’s influence in the House, a stature that was only diminished following his retirement announcement nearly a year before his exit.

During the Obamacare repeal effort, for example, Freedom Caucus leaders circumvented Ryan’s office and took their case directly to the president to enact changes to the initial repeal Ryan had drafted. Those changes, while eventually helping the bill over the finish-line, would later haunt the entire party: the GOP was hammered during the midterms for proposing to weaken protections for pre-existing conditions.

It’s wasn’t just conservatives either. Republicans on the Ways and Means committee privately vented about Ryan’s tight grip on the tax reform overhaul. Many of those GOP tax writers decided to retire or leave Congress altogether — some out of frustration that they couldn’t put their imprint on legislation.

Despite their differences, Ryan and Trump found a way to make their relationship work. Trump would refer to Ryan as the “boy scout.” Ryan, in turn, would try to convince Trump on issues privately instead of dogging him publicly.

But the two men never functioned as efficiently as Trump did with Mitch McConnell. Although the Senate majority leader had some bad moments with Trump, it was never as low as Ryan and Trump’s relationship during the 2016 campaign.

The tensions between the two men resurfaced just days before the midterm elections. Ryan pushed back on Trump’s proposal to ax birthright citizenship, saying he doesn’t have the power to change the Constitution. Trump tweeted that Ryan should be focused on the House’s re-election effort.

“Paul Ryan should be focusing on holding the Majority rather than giving his opinions on Birthright Citizenship, something he knows nothing about!” Trump tweeted. “Our new Republican Majority will work on this, Closing the Immigration Loopholes and Securing our Border!”

In his farewell speech, Ryan talked about how politics should be a “clash of ideas” but also a “civil” discourse. It was classic Ryan: urging his follow policymakers not to attack each other but find a way to work together to make change for the nation.

“One side may win, and one may lose, but we dust ourselves off and start anew knowing each one fought in pursuit of their honest ideals,” he said. “But today, too often, genuine disagreement quickly gives way to intense distrust. We spend far more time trying to convict one another than we do developing our own convictions.”

Ryan didn’t say Trump’s name once.