Houston Strategies

New 2005 state population estimates

Some breaking news this morning: We have the Census press release, the AP story, and, of course, the actual populations for each state as of July of this year on the web or in Excel format (so no Katrina displacements in here). Here are the nuggets of interest:

• Texas grew 1.7% over the last year to 22.86 million, a gain of 388K, which is the second largest numerical gain in the country after Florida at 404K.
  
• Texas is growing at almost twice the national rate of 0.9%, which grew the USA to 296.4 million. Looks like we'll pass the 300 million mark by 2007.
  
• Texas is still the second largest state behind whoppingly massive California at 36.1 million. We're putting more distance between us and number three, NY, at 19.3 million.
  
• Texas was the seventh fastest growing state on a percentage basis behind Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Florida, Utah, and Georgia.
• "The five states with the largest numerical growth (Florida, Texas, California, Arizona and Georgia) accounted for more than one-half (52 percent) of the nation’s population growth from 2004 to 2005."
  
• "The South recorded both the largest numerical population increase (1.5 million) and the fastest rate of growth (1.4 percent) among regions between 2004 and 2005."
  
• "The nation’s 10 most populous states accounted for 54 percent of the nation’s population on July 1, 2005." So the other 40 states are less than half our population. This helps explain why the House and Senate rarely agree, because there is such a substantial distance between the biggest states that dominate the House and the smaller states that own the Senate.
• "Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts lost population, as did the District of Columbia." And this is before the NYC transit strike...
  

Some interesting quotes in the AP article too:

Southern and Western states are growing so much faster than the rest of the country that several are expected to grab House seats from the Northeast and Midwest when Congress is reapportioned in 2010.

Demographers and political analysts project that Texas and Florida could each gain as many as three House seats. Ohio and New York could lose as many as two seats apiece.

Several other states could gain or lose single seats.

"The states in the Midwest are going through a transition," said Ohio GOP Chairman Bob Bennett. "We're going from a heavy manufacturing economic base to a more service-oriented base, and that transition has been very painful."

"But if you ever banned air conditioning," Bennett added, "I think people would flock back."

There's a Midwest economic development strategy for you: link air conditioning to global warming and get it banned. Good luck with that plan.

Continuing on the population power shifts in Congress over the last few decades:

Texas has been a big beneficiary of the shift in political power, making a Supreme Court fight over the boundaries of its congressional districts even more important, said Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas.

Republicans redrew the boundaries in 2003 after taking control of the state legislature, and then gained six House seats in the 2004 elections. Democrats and minority voting groups sued.

"You nail down Texas and you have a growth engine for your political party," Buchanan said.

Update: Just got an email with a few other stats of interest:

"Texas added 388,000 in the last year, compared to 290,000 in Calif, despite CA's much larger pop (36 v. 23m). This may be the first year since before WW2 that the actual pop growth in TX has been greater than CA (this is speculation at this point).

CA's population increase has been steadily falling. Had been 524,000 in 2000-2001. 2004-5 may be the first year since statehood (1850) that CA pop has grown slower than the national rate (0.8% v 0.9%). Since 2000, TX has added 2.1m, CA 2.3, FL 1.8, GA 0.9 and AZ 0.8."

posted by Tory Gattis @ 10:12 AM