AL, HI, MO, NV, UT: Population by CD

(Bumped – promoted by DavidNYC)

The Census Bureau unleashed population data from five more states today. First off is Alabama, who remained at seven seats (although they were close to losing one). Their target for 2010 is 682,819, up from about 635K in 2000. Most of the action looks to be in the Birmingham area, where suburban AL-06 was the big gainer and urban VRA district AL-07 was the big loser. While the knee-jerk expectation would be that AL-07 would simply extend out into the suburbs to make up that deficit, it’s likelier that the newly-GOP-controlled legislature will try to extend AL-07 to Montgomery or Huntsville (or both) to incorporate the African-American populations there, in order to make it blacker and the state’s other districts safer for white Republican representatives.

Hawaii is pretty drama-free; its new target is 680,151, up from 605K in 2000. With Maui as the fastest growing part of the state, the 2nd will need to give a little population to the 1st, although the boundary movement will happen in the suburban parts of Oahu.

Missouri missed the cut, and needs to lose one of its nine seats. Based on eight seats, its new target is 748,616, up from 622K in 2000. Missouri redistricting isn’t going to go well for Dems (and for Russ Carnahan, in particular) because the three districts with the lowest population are the three districts with Democratic representatives. While MO-01 lost the most population, the VRA will probably keep this in place as a black-majority district for Lacy Clay: the city of St. Louis’s population has shrunk so much (now only 319K) that it only makes up about half a district anymore, and his district already includes the city’s black-majority northern suburbs, so it’s likely to have to move westward into the inner-ring suburbs of St. Louis County or else southward to encompass all of St. Louis city. Either way, that’s coming out of Russ Carnahan’s MO-03, which will also need to give some ground to MO-08 below it.

I think we’ve found the most populous CD in the entire nation: NV-03, with more than a million people (its main rival for that honor, UT-03, didn’t break that mark; see below). Nevada, of course, is moving to four districts, with a target of 675,138 (up only slightly from 666K in 2000, but that was a three-district map). As you might expect, the state has become significantly more Hispanic, with the 1st going from 28% Hispanic in 2000 to 37%, the 2nd from 15% to 20%, and the 3rd from 16% to 23%.

While there had been discussion of Joe Heck’s district expanding outward to take in some of the rural counties, that will barely need to happen. Clark County (where Las Vegas is) has a population of 1,951,269, which is 72.3% of the state’s population (up from 68% in 2000). In other words, with 3/4s of the state’s population in Clark Co., NV-02 can pretty much continue being all of the state except Clark County (although it’ll need to lose its current small portions in Clark Co.), while Clark Co. will be divvied up among three districts instead of two. (Although, considering how empty the cow counties are, that stray 2.7% of the state may still wind up occupying a huge geographical footprint.)

Utah, of course, is also set to gain a seat. Its new four-seat target is 690,971 (the target was 744K in 2000, when it had three seats). The biggest growth was in Salt Lake City’s southern suburbs and also in the Provo area further south, both of which are found in UT-03. Whether the GOP-controlled legislature creates a new seat confined to the SLC area or tries cracking it four ways instead of three will depend on whether they decide to target Jim Matheson (currently the Democrat with the reddest House seat) or concedes a seat to him.