U.S. Population: Nearly 309 Million, Census Says

[sledgehammer]

Source: NPR

The nation's 23rd census has concluded that the U.S. population stood at 308,745,538 on April 1 of this year, up 9.7% from 281,421,906 in the year 2000, the Census Bureau just announced.

...

— Eight states will gain members in the House. They are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington.

— Ten states will lose members in the House. They are: Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/12/21/132230619/u-s-population-stood-at-nearly-309-million-census-says

---

Not-so-great news for blue staters.

[alp227]

1. 2008: WA, FL, NV=blue states. LA, MO=red states.

Still it's pretty scary that most of the states gaining population are Republican-dominated. Or maybe liberals are moving to those states? Who knows? This year's House elections are a sure sign.

[47of74]

2. Iowa, Illinois each lose congressional seat

Source: AP

Iowa and Illinois each lose a U.S. House seat, based on U.S. Census data.

Wisconsin's population grew 6 percent over the past decade to 5.7 million residents, enough to ensure that the state will retain all eight of its U.S. House seats.

Read more: http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=306211

---

Wishful thinking...but I wish King could be redistricted right out of his seat.

[Jankyn]

3. Mostly wishful thinking...

...since they'll probably just make his district in northwest Iowa bigger. But it sure would be nice.

[The Northerner]

4. IA will have a GOP governor & GOP-controlled state House in 2011 so

it'll be tough to remove King.

[roamer65]

14. I expect MI to lose a seat as well.

[no limit]

5. With census changes, GOP gains edge in races for Congress, president

Source: LA Times

WASHINGTON — New census data show GOP-dominated Texas will gain four seats in the next Congress while traditionally Democratic-leaning states in the Midwest and Northeast will lose representation. The statistics released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday revealed an overall pattern of continued migration from northern states toward the Sunbelt.

The shift of 12 seats, affecting 18 states, gives Republicans a larger-than-expected edge in upcoming congressional and presidential elections.

New York and Ohio will lose two seats, according to the Census Bureau. Florida gains two seats, making it equal with New York for the first time in history.

States losing one seat include Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, Iowa, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Washington, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina will each gain one seat.

Overall, the U.S. population grew at about 10%. Nevada had the largest rate of growth at 35.1%.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/sc-dc-1222-redistricting-census-updat20101221,0,1714043.story

---

Well that sucks.

[villager]

6. "Larger than expected" because of the electoral college, not party affiliation?

In other words, people moving around doesn't necessarily change who the population at large votes for or identifies with (even if it allows GOP legislatures to create more fake districts).

What this must mean is that it gives Red states more electoral votes, so that outvoted Blue voters there have no say, ultimately, in Presidential races.

I wonder if this makes it more likely we'll get another Bush disaster -- a rightwing idiot "winning" the electoral votes, but losing the popular vote?

[Hawkeye-X]

7. For that very reason, Tom DeLay needs to be sentenced to life in prison

And the D's will gain all the seats in Texas, making it a blue state someday.

[Vogon_Glory]

9. Only If The Non-Voters Get Off Their A@@es...

Texas could very well have become a blue state within this decade if it hadn't been for the spectacular (non-) performance of the non-voters this election. When it came time to go to the polls this year, voters in poorer wards, inner-city neighborhoods, and minority districts stayed home in droves. As a result, the TEA Party reactionaries not only had walk-overs in statewide political races, but over 22 Democratic state representatives lost their office.

Texas is now not only a red state again, but the Democratic Party has been knocked almost into political irrelevance. The Republicans have a super-majority in the Texas state house and they can (and they will) not only walk all over the Democrats, but over Hispanics, Afro-Americans, and the poor of any ethnic group.

I am still bewildered, angry, and depressed at how successfully inner-city apathy, coupled to the radical right's resurgence, has not only successfully wiped out eighteen years of slow, steady Democratic political gains, but knocked the good guys even FURTHER back than after Tom DeLay and his crowd redistricted out a lot of good Democrats.

The fault isn't with just the TEA Party reactionaries; the fault is with every apathetic meat-head that passed up weeks of opportunity to go to the polls to defend their interests against right-wing race-baiting and the Republican Party's shameless catering to sociopathic greed.

I'm sorry, but a lot of the non-voters will find me very unsympathetic next campaign season.

:argh:

[JDPriestly]

10. Maybe the poor don't vote because neither side does anything

to help them. Neither party represents the interests of the poor. They don't even represent the interests of the middle class anymore. Why should the poor care? What difference does it make to them which rich people starve them?

[InkAddict]

15. +1 eom

[Vogon_Glory]

18. Maybe They Don't Understand The Difference Between Bad And Worse

Maybe the non-voters don't understand the difference between bad and worse. About all that the Texas Democratic Party has been able to do since Buckaroo Bush took control of the Texas governor's mansion and the Rethuglies took control of the state legislature is to try and slow down and moderate some of the worst right-wing ideas.

They didn't do that with the "help" of the non-voters. The non-voters sat on their a@@es just before Dubya took office for the first time. They stayed seated on their backsides when Tom DeLay re-drew state representatives' district boundaries and congressional district boundaries 12 years later. They stayed idle again this year when the Democrats fielded a half-way decent gubernatorial candidate and a good one for attorney general and when the majority party gets to redraw state representatives' and congressional district boundaries.

As bad as things were here in Texas before this November, there USED to be a firewall. Texas Democrats were on the cusp of gaining a majority in the lower house of the state legislature--a thin one, perhaps, but a majority for the first time since the early 1990s. That was not only blown away but now the Rethuglies have a legislative super-majority and the most that poor and minorities will be able to do for the next two years is bend over and take it (And thanks to the non-voters' indolence, the comeback trail will be EVEN HARDER THAN IT WAS EARLIER).

This situation needn't have happened. If Texas Hispanics and Texas Afro-Americans had only voted in the same proportions of their total population as the white population does, the results would have been very different. Not only might there not have been a Democratic wipeout in the state legislature, but it's more than plausible that major Texas policos' love affairs with the extreme right might have been rudely interrupted as a couple of the leading Rethugs would have been fired by the voters and others might have squeaked through instead of breezng to easy victories with over half a million vote margins.

As Texas Hispanics discover that their state government has turned into Arizona East (There are at least two Arizona SB 1070-style bills in the works) and that Hispanics and Afro-Americans (And less-fortunate whites) find out that the state government has turned into Mississippi-on-the-Prairie, they're about to get a whole new course in their political education.

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if the same non-voters choose to perform their sit-on-their-cans ballet again in 2012.

:grr:

[Creative]

17. Perhaps, but on the downside, those 4 seats will equate to 4 red electoral votes.

[canucksawbones]

8. I was hoping

Minnesota would lose Michelle Bachmann's (R-stark raving mad) seat

G

[pampango]

11. Maybe not as bad as it looks. "New Census Data Brings Good News for Democrats"

http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/john-farrell/2010/12/21/new-census-data-brings-good-news-for-democrats.html

Superficial analysis will hail this as a political windfall for Republicans, largely because Texas is expected to pick up four congressional seats. Recent history, however, warns against such claims. In winning three of the last five presidential elections, the Democrats have shown their ability to compete in the Sun Belt, especially in the West. Even in last November's disaster, the Continental Divide acted as a firewall, with Democrats winning crucial statewide elections in Colorado, Nevada, California and Washington.

The reason is pretty obvious: Republicans have a problem with minority voters. Multi-racial coalitions gave Barack Obama victory in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, California and other crucial states in 2008. Yes, the Sun Belt is growing, but to a great extent that growth is Hispanic. Newt Gingrich can take all the Spanish lessons he wants, but the Tea Party Republicans won't let their party bend on immigration. Senate Republicans did themselves no favor by rejecting so moderate and fair a measure as the DREAM Act last week.

Politics runs in cycles. When the GOP stopped running Californians (there was a Nixon or a Reagan on the GOP national ticket in seven of the nine presidential elections between 1952 and 1984), and stepped up the bashing of Hispanic immigrants, it shoved the nation's biggest political plum, majority-minority California, into Democratic hands and forfeited its once-vaunted Electoral College "lock."

Texas is a GOP bastion now. But it too is a majority-minority state. In part because of the Bush family's moderation on race and immigration, Democrats have failed at assembling (and getting to the polls) the kind of multi-racial coalition there that has proven successful in other states. But unless Jeb runs for president, the Bush era is over, at least for a generation.

[okieinpain]

12. i understand there will be more seats in red states, but if the

people who were in nothern states voted dem, why would they change and start voting repug just because they are in a different place. shouldn't this be bad news for repugs.

[Bigmack]

13. Each and every one of the 309 million....

is paying $485 this year for the clusterfuck in Afghanistan.

[Creative]

16. It is somewhat good news for the zero-growth folks though.

The US's population grew less than 10% during the first decade of this century.

[Posteritatis]

19. And a lot of that was immigration

I was actually just reading an article on that (need to finish doing so when I find my copy of FA again, at which point I might drop the article title in the thread) that said as far as birthrates go, the US has been hovering right around replacement level for awhile, with almost all of the increase being immigration.