The Census Bureau provides estimates in between the decennial official Census. The most recent state by state data is from July 2003, with changes measured since the last Census in April 2000. That is about one-third of the way to the next census. Here's the data in a spreadsheet:
census.gov
The total U.S. population increased 3.3 percent in those 3+ years. The blue states have changed as follows:
California +4.8%
Connecticut +2.3%
Delaware +4.3%
Hawaii +3.8%
Illinois +1.9%
Maine +2.4%
Maryland +4.0%
Massachusetts +1.3%
Michigan +1.4%
Minnesota +2.8%
New Hampshire +4.2%
New Jersey +2.7%
New York +1.1%
Oregon +4.0%
Pennsylvania +0.7%
Rhode Island +2.7%
Vermont +1.7%
Washington +4.0%
Wisconsin +2.0%
Of the 19 Blue states, 12 are growing more slowly than the country as a whole, and 7 are growing more quickly.
The fastest growing states from April 2000 to July 2003 were all red states:
Nevada +12.2%
Arizona +8.8%
Florida +6.5%
Texas +6.1%
Georgia +6.1%
Colorado +5.8%
Idaho +5.6%
Utah +5.3%
California is in ninth place.
In terms of reapportionment, it matters a lot more if a big state has significantly faster or slower growth than it does for a small state. Utah grew by over 5 percent, but that only represents 118,000 people. California grew by less than 5 percent, but added 1.6 million people.
How does the reapportionment formula work? The Census Bureau has a paper on its Web site which describes the calculation process:
census.gov
There were lawsuits after the 1990 reapportionment in which Montana and Massachusetts were advocating different methods of calculating how many seats in the House (and hence how many electoral votes) each would have. The cases reached the Supreme Court, and Justice Stevens wrote the Court's opinion in the case:
supct.law.cornell.edu
Basically, Stevens upheld the "equal proportions" method of allocating the seats. The formula is too complicated for the layperson to run precisely, but basically it works as follows: Since the 2003 estimate of population of the 50 states (excluding D.C.) is 290,246,393, the average population of the Congressional districts should be 667,233 (population divided by 435).
Since some single state Districts are smaller than that and others are larger than that but not big enough to have two districts (this was Montana's problem which led to the lawsuit), the proportions do not come out exactly. But scanning the population shifts from 2000-2003, you end up with the following deviations from "normal" or "average" 3.3 percent population growth:
578,610 .Texas
508,815 .Florida
495,035 .California
280,868 .Arizona
228,043 .Georgia
176,955 .Nevada
106,725 .Colorado
95,264 .North Carolina
74,257 .Virginia
44,573 .Utah
42,797 .Washington
37,640 .Maryland
29,675 .Idaho
25,257 .Oregon
11,120 .New Hampshire
8,032 .Delaware
6,090 .Hawaii
2,913 .South Carolina
1,198 .Alaska
-4,461 .New Mexico
-6,750 .Rhode Island
-8,835 .Wyoming
-9,811 .Vermont
-11,267 .Maine
-14,346 .Montana
-15,445 .South Dakota
-22,453 .Minnesota
-27,553 .District of Columbia
-28,446 .Nebraska
-29,556 .North Dakota
-34,596 .Connecticut
-35,260 .Tennessee
-35,906 .Arkansas
-52,994 .Oklahoma
-53,624 .New Jersey
-54,038 .Kansas
-57,249 .Mississippi
-57,672 .West Virginia
-57,775 .Kentucky
-68,407 .Wisconsin
-76,890 .Missouri
-78,891 .Iowa
-85,520 .Indiana
-93,102 .Alabama
-120,100 .Louisiana
-125,195 .Massachusetts
-175,872 .Illinois
-186,465 .Michigan
-291,999 .Ohio
-320,874 .Pennsylvania
-412,941 .New York
Remember that this is for one-third of a decade, and it takes on average a population shift of around 667,000 to move one seat. Based on that, I would say that New York will likely lose at least two seats, Pennsylvania two seats, Ohio one seat, Michigan and Illinois one seat each, and maybe Massachusetts one seat. Kerry won each of those states except, of course, Ohio.
Where would the seats go? Probably two to Texas, two to Florida, one or two to California, one each to Arizona and Georgia, and possibly one to Nevada. Only California is a Kerry state, though Nevada and Florida were close.
So my early read on the situation is that the Republicans will probably pick up six or seven more red state electoral votes through reapportionment if the current red/blue divide persists into 2012. |
