With the new year on the horizon, and the mid-term election machines heating up soon, it’s probably worth remembering that we have a decennial census and reapportionment (and re-gerrymandering) coming up as well.
CQ Politics passed along this bit of information, based on 2009 interim estimates released by the Census Bureau this week:
A total of 10 seats would shift among 17 states if the reapportionment of the U.S. House were held today, according to an analysis by the Virginia-based consulting firm Election Data Services (EDS). That analysis is based on estimates of each state’s population on July 1, 2009, that were released early Wednesday by the Census Bureau.
While this overall number of seat switches is within range of previous annual estimates by EDS, there were surprises in the state-by-state projections of seat gains and losses. And, perhaps most importantly, the firm’s report underscored how much is still in flux with the actual once-a-decade head count just months away — and how close several states are to the edge of gaining or losing an additional seat.[…]
All eight states that would gain seats based on the 2009 population estimates are in the South and West: Texas would gain three, with one seat apiece for Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington. Of the nine states that would lose seats, only one — projected one-seat loser Louisiana — is in the South. The rest are in the Frost Belt: Ohio, with its projected two-seat loss, with one-seat losses for Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
