Tag: demographics

The Census Bureau recently started to release 2007 American Community Survey data for the whole country broken down by congressional district. I’m going to start with total population figures, as that may be the most important figure: while it doesn’t tell us how the composition of the district has changed recently, it does give us a pretty clear picture of the trajectory different districts are on, in terms of where they’ll be come redistricting time in 2010. (I’ll get to income and poverty numbers in a different diary soon. Other information, such as race, education, and age, hasn’t been released and won’t be for a few more weeks.)

I’ll start with the districts which have experienced the greatest population gain. These are the areas that will have to shed the most population (often into newly-created districts).

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
AZ-06	Flake (R)	641,360	944,706	303,346
NV-03	Porter (R)	665,345	949,685	284,340
AZ-02	Franks (R)	641,435	923,694	282,259
GA-07	Linder (R)	630,511	874,059	243,548
TX-10	McCaul (R)	651,523	889,342	237,819
FL-05	Brown-Waite (R)	639,719	870,558	230,839
CA-45	Bono Mack (R)	638,553	850,429	211,876
TX-26	Burgess (R)	651,858	843,902	192,044
NC-09	Myrick (R)	619,705	811,360	191,655
TX-22	Lampson (D)	651,657	843,070	191,413
FL-14	Mack (R)	639,298	827,747	188,449
CA-44	Calvert (R)	639,008	821,102	182,094
GA-06	Price (R)	630,613	808,518	177,905
TX-03	S. Johnson (R)	651,782	828,598	176,816
AZ-07	Grijalva (D)	640,996	797,355	156,359
GA-03	Westmoreland (R)	630,052	777,210	147,158
UT-03	Cannon (R)	744,545	891,668	147,123
GA-09	Deal (R)	629,678	774,544	144,866
ID-01	Sali (R)	648,922	791,628	142,706
CO-06	Tancredo (R)	614,491	755,315	140,824
FL-08	Keller (R)	639,026	778,960	139,934
VA-10	Wolf (R)	643,714	780,534	136,820
WA-08	Reichert (R)	655,029	790,781	135,752
IL-14	Foster (D)	654,031	787,087	133,056
FL-25	M. Diaz-Balart (R)	638,315	770,952	132,637

Much more over the flip…

Now here are the districts that have lost the most population between 2000 and 2007, and which will need to absorb the most surrounding territory (or be eliminated and dispersed into surrounding districts).

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
LA-02	Jefferson (D)	639,048	385,399	– 253,649
PA-14	Doyle (D)	645,809	547,019	– 98,790
MI-13	Kilpatrick (D)	662,844	568,760	– 94,084
PA-02	Fattah (D)	647,350	556,246	– 91,104
OH-11	vacant	630,668	539,938	– 90,730
IL-07	D. Davis (D)	653,521	586,439	– 67,082
NY-28	Slaughter (D)	654,464	588,681	– 65,783
IL-04	Gutierrez (D)	653,654	589,874	– 63,780
MI-14	Conyers (D)	662,468	599,005	– 63,463
NY-27	Higgins (D)	654,200	598,044	– 56,156
IL-17	Hare (D)	653,531	598,742	– 54,789
CA-09	Lee (D)	639,426	584,787	– 54,639
KS-01	Moran (R)	672,051	617,449	– 54,602
AL-07	A. Davis (D)	635,631	581,269	– 54,362
MS-02	B. Thompson (D)	710,996	656,843	– 54,153
TN-09	Cohen (D)	631,740	577,995	– 53,745
PA-05	Peterson (R)	646,326	594,617	– 51,709
CA-53	S. Davis (D)	638,703	587,042	– 51,661
MN-05	Ellison (D)	614,874	565,407	– 49,467
OH-17	Ryan (D)	630,316	581,058	– 49,258
MA-08	Capuano (D)	635,185	587,438	– 47,747
OH-10	Kucinich (D)	631,003	585,892	– 45,111
MI-12	Levin (D)	662,559	617,539	– 45,020
PA-01	Brady (D)	645,422	600,957	– 44,465
MO-01	Clay (D)	621,497	577,240	– 44,257

Note the high number of Republican districts on the growth list, and the high number of Democratic districts on the shrinkage list. The first list is 25 of the districts that are some of the most archetypal exurbs, and the second list is mostly the inner cities of the Rust Belt. Now, I could go all David Brooks on you, and make the case that this spells doom for the Democrats, because Democrats are either dying out or else moving to the exurbs as complete blank slates who get turned into Republicans when they eat the magic GOP fairy dust that they sprinkle over the salad bar at Applebee’s.

However, this needs to be viewed through the lens of the bluening of the people remaining in the cities, and, maybe more importantly, the bluening of the people in the inner ring suburbs. In fact, there’s probably something of a ripple effect going on: people moving from the city to the inner ring suburbs, bringing their city values with them, and people already in the inner city suburbs looking around them, not liking what they see anymore, and moving further out to the exurbs. (Which isn’t to say the suburbs-to-exurbs migration is consciously for racist or ideological reasons; it might be expressed purely in terms of wanting a bigger house with granite countertops, or having more elbow room separating them from neighbors. For whatever reasons, though, someone predisposed to valuing that, more so than an easier commute, a walkable neighborhood, or more interaction with neighbors, may also likelier to be predisposed to being a Republican.)

In addition, immigration plays a big factor. Traditionally, cities were the beachhead for wave after wave of immigrants in American history, but now many of them are making their first stop in the suburbs or even exurbs. As I said earlier, 2007 race data isn’t available yet, but when it is, you’ll see that much of the growth in the fastest growing districts (TX-10 and GA-07 especially come to mind) is non-white. (There’s also another consideration: migration from other states, and people bringing their northern values with them to the Sun Belt.)

Note that this is different from a list of purely the most and least populous districts. Here are the ten most populous districts:

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
NV-03	Porter (R)	665,345	949,685	284,340
AZ-06	Flake (R)	641,360	944,706	303,346
MT-AL	Rehberg (R)	902,195	933,264	31,069
AZ-02	Franks (R)	641,435	923,694	282,259
UT-03	Cannon (R)	744,545	891,668	147,123
TX-10	McCaul (R)	651,523	889,342	237,819
GA-07	Linder (R)	630,511	874,059	243,548
FL-05	Brown-Waite (R)	639,719	870,558	230,839
UT-02	Matheson (D)	744,287	857,741	113,454
UT-01	Bishop (R)	744,377	852,082	107,705

And the ten least populous:

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
LA-02	Jefferson (D)	639,048	385,399	– 253,649
RI-01	Kennedy (D)	524,189	506,472	– 17,717
WY-AL	Cubin (R)	493,782	508,840	+ 15,058
RI-02	Langevin (D)	524,130	512,250	– 11,880
NE-03	A. Smith (R)	570,532	537,076	– 33,456
OH-11	vacant	630,668	539,938	– 90,730
PA-14	Doyle (D)	645,809	547,019	– 98,790
IA-05	King (R)	585,171	548,055	– 37,116
PA-02	Fattah (D)	647,350	556,246	– 91,104
MN-05	Ellison (D)	614,874	565,407	– 49,467

As you can see, these lists aren’t quite as interesting, because of some oddball picks where states started out the decade with either very large (Montana, Utah) or very small (Rhode Island, Iowa) districts, because their populations put them on the cusp of whether or not to get an extra seat. (Or in the case of Wyoming, because there are so few people there at all.) However, I suppose it might be interesting to start a betting pool as to when Rhode Island drops to one at-large seat (2020?).

Two weeks ago we looked at the racial breakdown of population changes from the years 2000 to 2007 in the states that are projected to gain seats after the 2010 census. In many of the states (Arizona, Florida, Nevada) Hispanic growth far outpaced white growth, and this was especially pronounced in Texas. I vowed to return to this when the 2007 estimate, broken down by congressional district or county, was released; well, it hasn’t, but I thought I’d look at the changes from the 2000 census to the 2006 estimate, broken down by county.

The changes are pretty dramatic, and they show that the Hispanic and African-American growth is solidly concentrated in the metropolitan areas (which was something I was concerned about when I last posted on this). For redistricting purposes, it helps us immensely to have this growth concentrated as much as possible, so that even if the Texas GOP controls the redistricting process, they may have no choice but to concede several new majority-minority or ‘influence’ House districts, instead of being able to disperse and dilute those votes.

In the following tables, I’ve broken the large counties down by the metro area they’re part of. There’s also a separate table for ‘rest of the state,’ which is all of the counties that are left over.

Houston area

County	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
Brazoria	46,131	10,363	10,027	7,274	17,628
Fort Bend	138,735	31,662	32,575	32,832	37,973
Galveston	33,393	15,056	1,049	2,795	12,485
Harris	485,629	-4,677	95,933	35,369	364,560
Montgomery	104,522	64,104	7,022	3,873	29,027

Dallas area

County	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
Collin	207,176	99,096	26,944	35,834	42,912
Dallas	126,826	-139,664	33,058	15,357	221,832
Denton	151,262	74,506	15,295	14,986	41,487
Tarrant	225,076	31,307	44,605	18,331	129,308

San Antonio and Austin area

County	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
Bexar	162,661	9,515	9,725	10,310	132,625
Travis	108,726	20,270	4,161	14,309	70,191
Williamson	103,863	56,529	6,916	6,645	28,123

South Texas

County	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
Cameron	52,490	-3,825	-363	1,755	50,988
Hidalgo	131,171	2,365	812	2,079	123,642
Nueces	7,812	-7,164	-595	564	14,130

Other major counties

County	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
Bell	19,973	3,156	6,399	1,683	9,307
El Paso	56,988	-11,704	-634	1,048	67,699
Jefferson	-8,137	-13,138	-1,099	-215	6,011
Lubbock	12,234	554	180	749	10,207
McLennan	13,372	1,195	729	1,476	9,205

Rest of state

Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
872,657	270,799	72,870	26,253	511,393

As you can see, there is a huge concentration of Hispanic growth in Harris County (Houston and its closest suburbs), to the extent that even if Republicans solely control the redistricting process they may have to concede the creation of a new Hispanic-majority district in central and south-west Houston (probably accompanied by pushing the current 7th further out into the western suburbs to maintain its strong Republican lean).

There also looks like the possibility of a Hispanic-majority district in Dallas, particularly if it’s a barbell-shaped district that takes in western Dallas and the central part of Fort Worth with a strip of suburbs in between (accompanied by pushing the 24th and 32nd further north into Collin and Denton Counties, fast-growing conservative exurbs to the north of Dallas). If Republicans control redistricting, they might not want to concede this district as well, but the population numbers might pave the way for a Voting Rights Act vote-dilution lawsuit that could force the creation of the district anyway.

Remaining Hispanic growth seems dispersed enough that the remaining two seats (of the four Texas is predicted to gain) are likely to be those long, squiggly Republican-leaning rural seats that the Texas GOP seems to love so much. But even there, the Texas Republicans are going to be fighting a slowly losing battle, building bulwarks against a rising tide.

UPDATE: It was asked in the comments if this data was available broken down by congressional district. As with counties, it isn’t broken down by congressional district for 2007, but it is for 2006, so here are the districts in the two major metro areas:

Houston area

District	2000-04 PVI	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
TX-02 (north suburbs)	R+12	95,936	5,766	36,233	10,339	44,521
TX-07 (west Houston)	R+16	111,479	10,157	34,502	16,457	53,946
TX-08 (Montgomery Co.)	R+20	112,708	71,110	3,618	4,381	32,795
TX-09 (south Houston)	D+21	46,698	-21,186	5,334	-1,836	72,098
TX-10 (west suburbs)	R+13	197,489	58,452	21,843	22,577	91,974
TX-14 (Brazoria, Galveston Cos.)	R+14	80,660	30,099	5,389	6,249	33,776
TX-18 (north Houston)	D+23	35,176	-22,950	-1,530	-16	61,501
TX-22 (Fort Bend Co.)	R+15	156,439	12,262	44,954	35,114	62,637
TX-29 (east Houston)	D+8	38,363	-34,178	-507	3,034	71,678

Dallas area

District	2000-04 PVI	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
TX-03 (Collin Co.)	R+17	161,646	39,434	32,662	34,758	57,888
TX-04 (Collin Co.)	R+17	129,236	64,729	14,452	8,631	38,159
TX-05 (eastern suburbs)	R+16	62,297	4,304	11,094	3,112	44,988
TX-06 (southern suburbs)	R+15	100,664	4,912	34,321	5,874	56,831
TX-12 (Ft. Worth)	R+14	98,789	44,514	6,271	5,363	43,648
TX-24 (airport area)	R+15	115,310	-15,695	28,387	23,600	79,641
TX-26 (Denton Co.)	R+12	162,261	73,887	8,893	11,041	63,934
TX-30 (south Dallas)	D+26	31,221	-23,647	-7,824	-364	60,496
TX-32 (north Dallas)	R+11	2,734	-45,354	6,716	-1,596	44,824

This puts into pretty stark relief why TX-07, TX-10, and TX-32 are suddenly on everyone’s maps: demographically, they’re totally different districts than they were four, let alone eight, years ago.

The first reaction when someone sees a list of the states that are poised to gain House seats as a result of the 2010 census is usually “Uh oh, that’s a lot of red states.” Well, that’s true; of the nine states that Election Data Services projects as possibly gaining seats, only one (Oregon) has voted Democratic in the last few presidential elections. This might make the Electoral College more difficult in the short term.

The question is, though, who’s moving to these states (or being born in these states)? Over the long term, the answer is good news, because for the most part, it’s groups who are favorable to the Democratic party. (In particular, Latinos.) As immigrants get citizenship, and as their kids reach voting age, these states are likely to tip in our direction (unless the GOP somehow muzzles its nativist base and becomes all about inclusion). But this might have more immediate implications at the House level, because this may mean more minority-majority and/or ‘influence’ districts. Despite the fact that the new seats will be in red states, they might not be red seats. (Especially if we can control the redistricting process in as many of these states as possible.)

This table shows the raw numbers for population change for each major population group in each of these states between the 2000 census and the 2007 estimate. (White, Af.-Am., Asian = non-Hispanic white alone, non-Hispanic African-American alone, and non-Hispanic Asian alone.)

State	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
Arizona	1,208,123	469,107	66,077	58,131	582,480
Florida	2,268,865	640,271	475,492	135,175	1,072,845
Georgia	1,358,297	454,928	494,140	92,859	305,616
Nevada	567,125	183,986	54,547	64,482	250,514
North Carolina	1,011,719	473,557	211,927	54,860	259,481
Oregon	326,056	158,006	11,906	34,316	120,826
South Carolina	395,697	225,266	74,125	16,082	73,844
Texas	3,052,560	510,305	365,609	233,307	1,930,733
Utah	412,161	273,041	9,201	14,377	104,955

In Arizona, Florida, and Nevada, Hispanic growth outpaced white growth, and in Georgia, African-American growth outpaced white growth. Most glaring of all is Texas, where Hispanic growth has outpaced white growth by a factor of four. (I’ll follow up on this when they release the 2007 estimate broken down by Congressional district, which should happen soon. This can help us look closer at, say, Texas, and identify where exactly all this new growth is happening.)

Now that the open thread about what Congressional districts the Swing State Project readership hails from has died down, I thought I’d pull together some data to try and make some generalizations about what type of places we inhabit and who represents us.

This is a question that has always nagged me in the past when reading blogosphere calls to action. In other words, when all of us in the blogosphere get off our butts and call our representatives and complain, are we preaching to the choir? It’s been documented that the liberal blogosphere is more metropolitan, more affluent, more educated, whiter, and maler than the population at large. Does that mean that we are concentrated in urban, heavily Democratic districts, to the extent that most of us are represented by progressive reps who are already voting the way we want to, regardless of our demands? Or, based on the fact that many of the most educated and affluent districts are suburban swing districts, where our input might actually have some impact on a representative facing competing demands and potentially competitive elections?

One more Daily Kos demographic post by DrSteveB from May 2007 (so reflecting Congress’ current composition) sheds a little light on this: “Is Your Congressperson a Dem or Rep?” 63% of the respondents (sample of 2,610) said that they are represented by a Democrat, and 47% indicated that they would not support a primary challenge to their representative (most likely indicating satisfaction with the progressiveness of their representative, although it may also indicate resignation to their representative’s conservativeness as being acceptable given the district’s lean). 37% of the respondents were represented by a Republican. Compare this with the overall composition of the House, which is 54% Democrat and 46% Republican. Daily Kos is disproportionately represented by Democratic representatives.

To my surprise, this almost exactly matched the results from the much smaller sample here at Swing State Project. I found a sample of 81, using comments but not the Frappr map (not many Frappr participants actually cited their district, and those that did were often the same people who participated in the comments). Where commenters (usually college students) mentioned living in multiple districts without saying where they were registered, I assigned them to their ‘home’ (i.e. parents’) districts.

Here’s how we at SSP break down:

Democrat-held districts	50	62%
Republican-held districts	31	38%

But by knowing specifically which districts each respondent lives in, we can go a lot further than the Daily Kos survey did. For instance, we can check out what ideological caucuses our representatives are members of. Look at the first line: 16 of the 81 SSPers are represented by members of the Progressive Caucus, or 20% of us. In reality, Progressives are 68 of the 435 in the House, or 16% of the House members.

Caucus	SSPers	%	Actual percentage of House
Progressive Caucus	16	20%	16%
New Democrats	15	19%	14%
Blue Dogs	7	9%	11%
Cong. Black Caucus	7	9%	9%
Cong. Hispanic Caucus	3	4%	5%
Unaffiliated Dems	12	15%	14%
Main Street Partnership	9	11%	9%
Republican Study Comm.	15	19%	25%
Unaffiliated GOP	8	10%	12%

We’re disproportionately represented not just by Progressives but even more so by New Dems. Interestingly, we’re also disproportionately represented by Main Street Partnership members (maybe not surprising, since they tend to be concentrated in affluent and educated suburban districts). We’re under-represented among Blue Dog and RSC constituencies (again not surprising, since these tend to be the rural and less-educated districts). (Don’t look for these numbers to add up to 100, as many members belong to more than one caucus.)

We can also take a look at the ranked liberalness or conservativeness of our representatives. For this, I’ll use National Journal composite scores from 2007 (since they’re already an attempt to scale reps on their liberalness from 0 to 100). On average, our reps are more liberal than average, but, oddly, we’re under-represented by representatives who are in the top decile for liberalness. That may have something to do with the fact that we’re particularly over-represented by New Dems, while not being over-represented by CBC members, many of whom are among the House’s most liberal members.

Liberalness

Our median NJ score: 63.65 (Overall median is 50.75)

Our range: 95 (Al “Ooops, I’d better veer left because of my primary” Wynn in MD-04) to 7.7 (Virginia Foxx in NC-05)

6 of 81 (7.4%) are in top decile for liberalness (score of 87.3 or more)

29 of 81 (35.8%) are in top quartile for liberalness (76.8 or more)

14 of 81 (17.3%) are in bottom quartile for liberalness (21.3 or less)

5 of 81 (6.1%) are in bottom decile for liberalness (14.5 or less)

SSPers also tend to inhabit districts with a lean that is predisposed toward the Democrats at the presidential level. Only 29 out of the 81 of us live in districts with a Cook PVI rating that is Republican-leaning, and only 15 out of 81 live in districts with a rating of R+6 or more (which is where I’d start to say “that’s pretty red”).

PVI

Our median PVI: D+5 (Overall median is R+1)

Our range: D+43 (NY-15) to R+16 (TX-07)

12 of 81 (14.8%) are in top decile for PVI (D+22 or more)

29 of 81 (35.8%) are in top quartile for PVI (D+10 or more)

10 of 81 (12.3%) are in bottom quartile for PVI (R+10 or more)

5 of 81 (6.2%) are in bottom decile for PVI (R+15 or more)

Let’s look at a few other demographic indicators. Overall, SSPers are an extremely metropolitan bunch (it’s hard to break down ‘urban’ vs. ‘suburban’ because a lot of districts contain elements of both, and the census bureau uses a binary system where someone is either ‘urban’ or ‘rural,’ although I’ve observed that many districts that are 5-10% ‘rural’ tend to be what you’d think of as stereotypical suburban districts). The number, for each district, represents the census bureau’s count of people living in a ‘rural’ environment.

Ruralness

Our median ruralness: 5% (Overall median is 15.7%)

Our range: 64% (VA-05) to 0% (12-way tie)

5 of 81 (6.2%) are in top decile for ruralness (50.6% or more)

10 of 81 (12.3%) are in top quartile for ruralness (35.8% or more)

33 of 81 (40.7%) are in bottom quartile for ruralness (1.5% or less)

12 of 81 (14.8%) are in bottom decile for ruralness (0%)

SSPers tend to come from affluent districts. That, of course, doesn’t mean that they themselves are affluent, just that they live among people with high per capita incomes. (Especially considering that we seem to have a large number of college students and post-collegiate activists here.) These are using 2000 census numbers for each district’s per capita income, so bear in mind that these numbers have gone up even more (at least in some parts of the country).

Per capita income

Our median PCI: $23,208 (Overall median is $20,529)

Our range: $47,498 (CA-30) to $14,021 (CA-38)

21 of 81 (25.9%) are in top decile for PCI ($28,560 or more)

36 of 81 (44.4%) are in top quartile for PCI ($24,527 or more)

7 of 81 (8.6%) are in bottom quartile for PCI ($17,820 or less)

2 of 81 (2.5%) are in bottom decile for PCI ($15,277 or less)

And the area where SSPers seem most out of whack with the nation, even more so than per capita income, is education. Look at the numbers, which are each districts’ percentage of persons 25 or older with at least 4-year college degrees.

Education

Our median education: 30.5% (Overall median is 22.6%)

Our range: 53.8% (VA-08) to 12.5% (CA-38)

22 of 81 (27.2%) are in top decile for education (36.5% or more)

45 of 81 (55.6%) are in top quartile for education (28.9% or more)

6 of 81 (7.4%) are in bottom quartile for education (17.5% or less)

1 of 81 (1.2%) are in bottom decile for education (14.1% or less)

Taken as a whole, we can see that Swing State Project members (or at least the ones who responded to the question) are disproportionately represented by Democrats, and by Progressives or New Dems in particular. We’re coming from districts that are disproportionately urban, affluent, and educated. And when we get in touch with our representatives, many of us are getting in touch with someone who already shares our values.

(I’m probably as good a case in point as anyone. I’m in WA-07, which is Seattle. We’re represented by Jim McDermott, who’s in the Progressive Caucus and in the top quartile for liberalness. The district is in the top decile for PVI, educational attainment, and per capita income, and the bottom quartile for ruralness.)

For those who are interested in the full data set (and I know you’re out there), go to Google Docs for the database.