After knocking on 50 million doors and handling tens of millions of surveys, the Census Bureau on Tuesday announced that the official population of the United States is now 308,745,538.
The 2010 census also shows America’s once-torrid population growth dropping to its lowest level in seven decades.
The new number, based on the surveys taken on April 1, 2010, is a 9.7 percent increase over the last census, 281.4 million residents in 2000.
But that’s slower than the 13.2 percent increase from 1990 to 2000. And it’s the slowest rate of increase since the 1940 census. That is the decade in which the Great Depression slashed the population growth rate by more than half, to 7.3 percent.
As the Chron notes, Texas will gain four seats in the House.
The Texas gains are good news for Republicans, since Texas already is a solidly Republican state. But the Voting Rights Act is meant to ensure that minority votes aren’t diluted, so a Republican-majority Legislature — made even stronger by the parties victories in November – won’t necessarily be able to ensure all of the new seats lean GOP, and the state’s surging Hispanic population is likely to account for at least one of the new seats.
Texas currently has 32 Congressional seats; it gained two after the 2000 Census. The Houston metropolitan area may gain a new seat in fast-growing northwest Harris County.
More detailed data, which will be used to draw those districts, will come in February and March. Republicans will have their hands full trying to protect their wins in CDs 23 and 27, as neither of them was won with a majority of the vote and both of them topped 55% for the Democrat in 2008. Not saying they can’t do it, just that it won’t be easy. They also have a few existing incumbents who got less than 60%, in some cases against token opposition, in 2008 – Sam Johnson, John Culberson, Mike McCaul, Pete Olsen, Kenny Marchant, and Pete Sessions – who would no doubt like a bit more red in their districts. Doing all that, while trying to add new seats and not retrogressing minority voting rights further will be quite an accomplishment. My guess is that the GOP would be pretty happy with a 25-11 delegation, which would maintain their current 14-member advantage.
I’ll have some more thoughts later. For now, see Kos and Greg. Bear in mind that controlling the process doesn’t necessarily mean good things for the party that has the control. Louisiana, which will lose one seat, only has one Democrat, and it’s an African-American seat in New Orleans that isn’t going anywhere. By the same token, Massachusetts Democrats get to pick which one of their seats goes bye-bye. That said, Republicans have a lot of control in states where it will matter, so look for them to leverage it as much as they can. Political theater doesn’t get much more dramatic than this.
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Republicans will have their hands full trying to protect their wins in CDs 23 and 27, as neither of them was won with a majority of the vote and both of them topped 55% for the Democrat in 2008. Not saying they can’t do it, just that it won’t be easy. They also have a few existing incumbents who got less than 60%, in some cases against token opposition, in 2008 – Sam Johnson, John Culberson, Mike McCaul, Pete Olsen, Kenny Marchant, and Pete Sessions – who would no doubt like a bit more red in their districts. Doing all that, while trying to add new seats and not retrogressing minority voting rights further will be quite an accomplishment.
Yup. And this all adds up to something like a map I posted here. In summary: There are some other minor issues with the map, but I think that the overview is about right. Specifically, we’ll see a 24 R-12 D map with the Democrats representing the following: 3 from Greater Houston, 2 from DFW, 2 from the Valley, 1 from El Paso, 1 from Austin, 1 from San Antonio, 1 from Laredo, and 1 from South San Antonio to the border. I’m keep hearing rumors that the GOP might make a lot more swing districts, so I starting to suspect that I might be off. However, this would be foolish of them if they want to lock in power.