Yesterday I created lists of the biggest gainers and losers among congressional districts over the period of 2000-10, but only hinted at the changes in racial composition that were underlying the overall population changes. A longer post about the racial composition (analogous to this one I did a year and a half ago) changes is in the works, but as part of that I conceived of this table… which really would have worked better with yesterday’s piece, so I’m giving it its own home here. It shows the numeric change in each district, broken down by the numeric change among each race in each district.
What should stand out here is that among the 25 biggest gainers, in most of the districts, the combined non-white gains exceeded the (non-Hispanic) white gains. Among the few that didn’t, some are districts that are either heavy on retirees (AZ-02, FL-05), some have a large Mormon population (AZ-06, UT-03), with a few a little harder to classify (GA-09 is sort of the exurban white flight receptacle from the rest of the Atlanta area, and ID-01 is a mix of a lot of Mormons and a lot of white flight from southern California). As always, as I’ve cautioned many times before, these districts aren’t an immediate panacea for Democrats and look to stay fairly red for the short term; with most of these districts full of kids (kids who aren’t likely to grow up to be Republicans, though!), gains at the ballot box are going to unfold slooooowly.
| District | Rep. | Total change |
White change |
Black change |
Asian change |
Hispanic change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NV-03 | Heck (R) | 378,510 | 108,587 | 40,011 | 71,132 | 136,127 |
| AZ-02 | Franks (R) | 331,404 | 171,702 | 20,194 | 14,194 | 110,853 |
| AZ-06 | Flake (R) | 330,373 | 183,522 | 18,103 | 23,727 | 89,920 |
| TX-10 | McCaul (R) | 329,844 | 81,819 | 49,129 | 31,182 | 159,747 |
| FL-05 | Nugent (R) | 289,814 | 178,699 | 27,165 | 10,496 | 65,238 |
| CA-45 | Bono Mack (R) | 275,656 | 56,706 | 17,886 | 22,645 | 170,850 |
| GA-07 | Woodall (R) | 272,680 | 10,327 | 123,993 | 47,477 | 80,659 |
| TX-26 | Burgess (R) | 263,279 | 112,403 | 20,457 | 21,450 | 100,522 |
| TX-22 | Olson (R) | 259,220 | 10,994 | 66,263 | 64,288 | 112,521 |
| TX-31 | Carter (R) | 250,233 | 108,700 | 24,991 | 16,193 | 89,632 |
| NC-09 | Myrick (R) | 232,672 | 96,914 | 62,615 | 15,404 | 47,784 |
| VA-10 | Wolf (R) | 225,723 | 58,443 | 19,165 | 65,737 | 71,862 |
| UT-03 | Chaffetz (R) | 221,687 | 116,807 | 4,236 | 7,233 | 79,400 |
| FL-14 | Mack (R) | 219,658 | 99,639 | 23,344 | 7,121 | 85,608 |
| AZ-07 | Grijalva (D) | 214,773 | 31,852 | 14,353 | 7,048 | 154,255 |
| NC-04 | Price (D) | 207,446 | 95,066 | 30,678 | 30,282 | 43,656 |
| CA-44 | Calvert (R) | 205,748 | 15,323 | 8,961 | 36,006 | 142,532 |
| CA-25 | McKeon (R) | 205,552 | – 11,603 | 33,418 | 23,554 | 156,518 |
| TX-21 | Smith (R) | 205,024 | 69,035 | 13,983 | 15,086 | 102,114 |
| FL-12 | Ross (R) | 202,103 | 38,827 | 46,963 | 8,079 | 101,630 |
| TX-28 | Cuellar (D) | 200,565 | 25,648 | 3,741 | 3,060 | 166,375 |
| TX-23 | Canseco (R) | 196,502 | 36,500 | 8,704 | 8,756 | 139,265 |
| TX-04 | Hall (R) | 194,642 | 93,402 | 19,450 | 12,972 | 60,583 |
| GA-09 | Graves (R) | 193,905 | 116,666 | 8,550 | 9,842 | 53,801 |
| ID-01 | Labrador (R) | 193,008 | 141,065 | 2,289 | 3,448 | 39,020 |
News to me. 😉
Look much different come 2013, depending on whether The Legislature can agree on a redistricting plan. So far, negotiations are heated on the budget, though both sides essentially realize some revenue (i.e. taxes) will have to be raised. If The Legislature can get its act together on the budget and get redistricting done in time (or at least get it done by the time a July special session ends), NV-03 will probably end up looking more like this, while the more diverse (and Democratic heavy) parts of the current NV-03 likely end up in the new NV-04 seat.
As I argued yesterday (http://rootedcosmopolitan.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/waking-up-to-a-more-complex-reality-about-redistricting/), increasing the percentage of black voters in an area has a disproportionate effect on the partisanship, because even in the areas where white voters are most rabidly Republican they’re still almost never more than 3-1 Republican, but black voters everywhere tend to be 8-1 or 9-1 Democratic. When you factor in the Hispanics and Asians, who aren’t as heavily Democratic as blacks but are still more Democratic almost everywhere than whites are almost anywhere, an increasing share of the minority population will almost everywhere make an area more Democratic. This is especially true if those minority voters in previously all or mostly white areas are moving from areas that were overwhelmingly minority. That means it’s harder to corral the Democrats together because they’re not concentrated, but those smaller but still overwhelmingly Democratic enclaves are less likely to be able to stand by themselves and have to be grafted on to areas that had been more likely to be in either a Republican or swing district.
Democratic votes are becoming more efficiently distributed, which is a redistricting plus for Democrats.
White gains slightly outnumber non-white gains there as well (though only by about 300 or so.) Like GA-09, that’s basically the receptacle for white flight from Dallas.
I knew it had diversified, but I had no idea to that rate. Assuming Wikipedia is right, GA-07 went from 80% white to 53% white.
only one of these fastest growing where net decrease in white population …
which districts gained the most AA population in the whole country? is it GA-07?
source: http://www.nationaljournal.com…
Georgia looks really interesting (ponder this: if Obama got the same percentage of the white vote in GA as he did in SC in 2008, he would have won GA)… would not be surprised if Obama makes a play for it …