Census Estimates for 2008 -> 2010 Apportionment

[cinyc]

The Census Bureau released its new estimates for the population of the states as of July 1, 2008. As in past years I have used that data to project the April 1, 2010 apportionment populations. This requires finding the population growth in the resident population for each state, then applying that to the apportionment population.

One special circumstance is to account for the effect of hurricane Katrina. LA saw an estimated drop of 250 K in the 10 months following the hurricane. If I used the normal methodology, that would project a continued decline through 2010. Instead, for LA I took the percentage growth from July 1, 2006 to July 1, 2008 then applied that to the estimate for July 1, 2008. To this I added the difference between the resident and apportionment populations in 2000 to reach a projected apportionment population for 2010.

Based on this projection, the following adjustments would be required to reapportion the seats in 2010:

AZ +2
FL +2
GA +1
IL -1
IA -1
LA -1
MA -1
MI -1
MN -1
MO -1
NV +1
NJ -1
NY -1
OH -2
PA -1
SC +1
TX +4
UT +1

Compared to last year's projection this is a shift of two seats from MN and OR to NY and SC. The last states awarded seats were FL 27 (431), NY 28 (432), CA 53 (433), SC 7 (434) and TX 36 (435). These seats are on the bubble and most at risk to fluctuations in growth in the next two years. TX 36 is particularly at risk since part of the population growth is due to Katrina relocation and dropped from seat 433 in last year's projection.

The next five seats would go to OR 6 (436), WA 10 (437), MN 8 (438), MO 9 (439), and NC 14 (440). Seat 436 is important if the new Congress passes a DC representation act like the one offered in Congress last year, since that seat could be real in 2010. OR and MN have been bouncing back and forth from this waiting list to the real list on the last couple of estimates, so they really could go either way in 2010.

It looks like the congress may pass it, so does that mean number increase to 436 or 437? And does it stay that way or go back to 435?

The bill to add a DC seat would increase the number of seats from the states to 436.

Where does RI 2 rank on the list?

[cinyc]

Anything else interesting yet?

Several Florida counties went from fast-growing to stagnant, as expected.

St. Bernard Parish in Lousiana was the fastest-growing.  Orleans Parish was the third-fastest. The repopulation of New Orleans continues - though St. Bernard is only about half as big as it was in 2000 and Orleans about 2/3rds as big.

The Travis County, Texas (Austin) estimated population was 998,543 as of July 1, 2008.  It should be over 1,000,000 by now.  Fulton County, Georgia joined the over 1,000,000-person county club as of July 1, 2008.

Of the top 25 metros, the Atlanta Metro passed the Washington Metro to move into the 8th spot on the largest metro area list.  The Phoenix Metro moved ahead of the San Francisco-Oakland metro into 12th.  Sacramento moved into the 25th slot, bumping Cleveland off the top 25 list.  The Detroit and Pittsburgh Metro areas lost population (no surprise there).

Michigan (-0.5%) and Rhode Island (-0.2%) lost population from 2007.   Maine, Ohio and Vermont were fairly stagnant, gaining 0.1%.  Pennsylvania was next worst at 0.2%.  The national growth rate was 0.9%.