Tuesday, December 21, 2010
2010 Census Data Released
The U.S. Census Bureau today released the results of the 2010 national census that will determine the apportionment of congressional seats among the 50 states. Indiana will hold steady at 9 seats; however, the average size of the state's congressional districts will grow by about 46,000 people to 722,398. Indiana's neighboring states didn't fare as well. Ohio will lose 2 congressional seats, while Illinois and Michigan will lose one each. Kentucky holds steady with 6 seats. Texas is the big winner, picking up 4 seats to increase its state's delegation to 36 seats. Florida picks up 2 seats, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah and Washington each pick up one new seat. The trend of congressional power shifting to the South and West continues with these latest census numbers at the expense of the upper Midwest and Northeast.
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8 comments:
Ohio could lose more seats in Congress, and I would not mourn their loss.
OK, so how, in this day & age, did each district grow by over 722,000?
It isn't the jobs, it isn't the pay, it isn't the foreclosures, etc.
Is it our welfare system? Our food stamp system? Our disregard of immigration laws? Fudge factor?
The state added about 400,000 people over the last 10 years, an increase of 6.6%.
Varan,
Exactly. I don't know why they act like it's a done deal. Apportionment is decided by Congress. They often have debates about on how to round off numbers which in turn affects apportionment.
Reposting Don Sherfick's comment here that was posted under the wrong post:
The size of the House of Representatives has been frozen for a century. The Constitution requires only that (subject to the one-representative minimum for each state) the MINIMUM number of people in a district is some 30,000. No maximum size. SCOTUS has before it a suit (rejected by a lower appeals panel) saying that the failure to the House to increase in size (which takes a law) violates the Constitution. It will probably fail because the court seldom enters the thicket of what's seen as a "political question" reserved for the legislature. And obviously had the House size grown proportionally to the increase in population since our founding, we'd have to move the whole thing to Lucas Oil Stadium (sorry, Gary, couldn't resist!). But it does see that some kind of overall adjustment might be in order. I won't hold my breath, though.
I heard today that the population shift is moving from blue states to red states.
Many of the red states that gained population was primarily due to increased Hispanics. This could tilt some of the red states to blue or purple.
HFFT,
While that's true, the impact doesn't really mean that much. All it means is that blue people are moving to red states. The red states will get slightly less red
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