South, West Expected to Gain Congressional Seats
March 30, 2010
When completed and tabulated the 2010 Census will provide a fairly accurate snapshot of where the U.S. population resides. The decennial enumeration has been conducted in the U.S. since 1790 and is used to determine apportionment of federal funding for public works projects, hospitals, schools, emergency services, and more. It is also used to determine the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Polidata, which has been analyzing and disseminating data related to the art of politics since 1974, analyzed 2009 interim Census Bureau data to determine that many states in the South and West will pick up seats, while many in the Midwest and Northeast will lose seats.
As fast as the South, and to a lesser extent, West, has been growing in the past 10 years, we are surprised that they are not picking up more seats (North Carolina's population grew by about 1.3 million–doesn't that earn it a new seat?). Likewise, we are surprised that even more Congressional seats are not being lost from the states in the Midwest and Northeast, as people have been fleeing those regions in droves (please see coverage of regional and state population dynamics in our monthly Age Curve Report).
States expected to gain Congressional seats:
Texas 4
Arizona 1
Georgia 1
Florida 1
Nevada 1
South Carolina 1
Utah 1
Washington 1
States expected to lose Congressional seats:
Ohio 2
Illinois 1
Iowa 1
Louisiana 1
Massachusetts 1
Michigan 1
Minnesota 1
New Jersey 1
New York 1
Pennsylvania 1
