Population Change by Congressional District, 2008

22 thoughts on “Population Change by Congressional District, 2008”

1. I wonder if the huge disparity in district sizes would argue for redistricting that is more frequent than every decade. Conceivably there might even be a one person, one vote argument to be made. As for reapportionment, though, the Constitution is pretty clear that that only happens every ten years.

   Love the BoBo Brooks line, btw.

2. Is my congressional district and I’m not surprised that it gained so many people. The suburbs in Wake County, espescially Cary, continue to explode in population, mostly from the thousands of transplants that arrive each week in the Triangle. The suburbs in Wake County are kind of a mixed bag in terms of Democratic/Republican performance. For instance we have two suburban Cary-area school board seats up tomorrow and they are looking very competitive. But Obama did much better in the suburbs than previous candidates, and Raleigh as a whole is very progressive. I’m still not sure if we’ll get a 14th district though, and if we did, I think it would be a heavily-GOP district designed to help shore up McIntyre, Kissell, and Etheridge. I don’t think they would dismantle Mel Watt’s district to create a Democratic Triad district as some on here have suggested. What do you guys think?

3. “Americans don’t want Dimmitcrats as their congressmen or (even worse), minorities are slowly (yeah…you gotta give them time) realizing that living under Demon-crat socialism welfare-ism (any other -isms out there?) ain’t that sweet a liberal gravy train, is it?”

   Grandmaster Beck was right “We surround them now!”

4. My observations remain much the same as last year: the David Brookses of the world would look at the sheer number of exurban red districts in the fast-growing column and the number of urban blue districts in the shrinking column, and point to hundreds of years of Republican dominance as urbanites are pulling away from the teat of the welfare state and moving out to the exurbs to make a fresh start as Patio Man and Realtor Mom.

   Not exactly: as the suburbs start to spread outward into these districts, bringing their annoying diversity, density, and workaday problems with them, these red districts are, for the most part, becoming Democratic. Just for a few examples, consider CA-25, which went from 59-40 for Bush to 49-48 for Obama, or NC-09, which went from 63-36 for Bush to 55-45 for McCain. In addition — as we’ll see in the next installment, where we’ll focus on changes in race — immigrants are often making the suburbs their first destination, quickly changing the complexion of the outer rings around many cities.

   I served as a field coordinator with the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund in CA-11 during the 2006 midterm election. CA-11 straddles the eastern edge of the Bay Area and much of San Joaquin County, which is mostly farmland. People wrote off McNerney as unable to make a dent in San Joaquin County because it was “too conservative.”

   What really happened was people moving out of the cities and setting up shop in Tracy (Pombo’s hometown and base) and the surrounding areas.

   Pombo ended up barely winning San Joaquin County and when word of that news got to us, we knew it was over, because we ran up the score in Alameda County (McNerney’s base county) and further south in Santa Clara County and took the moderate Contra Costa County, which include upper-middle class and higher tax brackets.

   This change in population isn’t a “white flight” of years prior. It is liberal expansion into the exurbs.

5. Merry Christmas to the Crisitunity household…tell us more of you’re holiday calendar lol.

6. Looking at the list of districts that have lost the most population from 2000 to 2008, it is striking that 14  of the top 25 are minority-majority districts (and an additional 2 are white majority districts represented by African-American Congressmen — IN-7 and MN-5).  And of the 10 districts that lost the most population from 2007 to 2008, an additional 5 are minority-majority districts.  

   This means that one of the challenges of re-districting will be the need to draw lines preserving these VRA districts. While it is certainly possible to do creative re-districting in places where Democrats control the process and add chunks of Republican territory to these districts, in most cases it will require the absorption of surrounding territory including suburbs that have become increasingly diverse in order to preserve the minority-majority status of the district. In places where Republicans control redistricting, this will offer them the opportunity to further cram minority/Democratic votes into overwhelmingly Democratic seats, allowing greater efficiency of Republican voters in remaining seats.

   Especially in states that may lose seats (IL, LA, MI, OH, PA) this could present difficulties in drawing lines that preserve other white-majority Democratic seats – perhaps removing chunks of African-American or Latino voters from these districts, perhaps forcing some of those districts out into less diverse ex-urban areas. While these areas are trending Democratic, they will still make many of these seats much more marginal.

   It will be interesting to see if these possible losses will be offset by possible addition of minority-majority seats, especially Latino seats in places like AZ, TX and central FL. (CA may lose seats overall, but internal population shifts probably will slightly increase the number of Latino majority seats there.)

   This points out the utter importance of the gubernatorial and state legislative elections in 2010  – especially  since whether we hold the governor’s office in places like OH, MI and PA  will help determine the make-up of Congress for the coming decade.  

7. I would think people would have been leaving my distrixt due to the fact that home foreclosures are so high in the Riverside portion.

   What does this mean in terms of redistricting for ca-44?

8. I still would like to see the size of the House increased.  You would think some of these states that continually see population losses or smaller ones that feel under-represented would bandy together to get more seats or keep the ones they have.

   New England, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Louisiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, The Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii.

   I know, I know, but it’s the Senate that over represents the smaller states.  I say increase both houses.  I like the idea from over at FiveThirtyEight:

   Indeed, the better idea would be to push for a constitutional amendment not to eliminate the Senate, or even to make it exactly like the House, but to at least move it closer toward more equipopulous representation. For example, if we added another 50 senate seats, to be redistributed based on population above and beyond the guaranteed two each state already receives, that would bring it in somewhat closer proportion. We could even set an upper limit so that no state has, say, more than five as well as none having fewer than two. That would actually go some distance, however partial, toward remedying the grotesque disparities of the Senate–and yet still give smaller states a disproportionate share of the seats relative to their population shares, just not as disproportionate.

   Of course, I realize that few U.S. senators, and probably no small-state senators, will want to propose such an amendment. (Likewise for state legislators from those states who would have to ratify it, barring the use of state conventions.) Such a proposal would thus likely require a constitutional convention.

   That raises an idea: If the town hall protesters want to redirect their energies elsewhere, maybe they can agitate for such an amendment. Many of them claim to believe in having everyone heard, and as it is now some people–smaller and more rural and whiter citizens, it should be said–are heard disproportionately in the halls of Congress, which in part explains why we can’t get health care reform in the damn first place.

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