New Re-Apportionment Study: NY to Lose Only One Seat

[ccharles000]

http://www.swingstateproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4190

Election Data Services has updated its projections (PDF) for Congressional re-apportionment after the 2010 census, taking into account population changes over the past year. (You can find a summary of EDS's 2007 findings here.) The news is good in particular for the state of New York.
This time, EDS offers five different models for projecting every state's population two years hence. The column headers indicate the range of time used to come up with each projection.


State 2000-2008 2004-2008 2005-2008 2006-2008 2007-2008
Arizona 2 2 2 2 2
California 0 -1 -1 -1 0
Florida 2 2 1 1 1
Georgia 1 1 1 1 1
Illinois -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Iowa -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Louisiana -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Massachusetts -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Michigan -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Minnesota -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Missouri -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Nevada 1 1 1 1 1
New Jersey -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
New York -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
North Carolina 0 0 1 1 0
Ohio -2 -2 -2 -2 -2
Oregon 0 1 1 1 1
Pennsylvania -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
South Carolina 1 1 1 1 1
Texas 4 4 4 4 4
Utah 1 1 1 1 1

As you can see, there isn't a whole lot of difference between the models. Only four states aren't uniform across the board: California, Florida, North Carolina, and Oregon. CA & OR apparently have seen a recent uptick in relative growth while FL and NC have experienced the opposite.

The bigger deal, though, are the changes compared to last year's survey. The previous version of this study used three models rather than five, but all of them showed NY losing two seats. Now, all five EDS projections show NY losing just one seat. This might hardly seem like something to cheer about for a state which had 45 House seats just half a century ago, but I for one am glad.

So where does this seat probably come from? As it happens, it's a state known for its sizable ex-New Yorker population. Three of the five current models (and all of them the shortest-term) show Florida dropping a seat while only one of three did in 2007. Meanwhile, Minnesota now looks pretty certain to lose a seat while South Carolina appears set to gain one.

Things could of course still change over the next two years. As EDS notes, the economic crisis has already reduced migration rates to their lowest level since the 1940s (when the government first started tracking this information). A worsening recession could cause even more people to stay put, changing these numbers yet again. We'll just have to wait and see.

[rpannier]

1. Thanks nt

[ColbertWatcher]

2. I bet Michigan loses one too. : ( Kick and rec nonetheless. Good info, ccharles. n/t

[davidpdx]

3. The population in Southern Oregon is growing

Medford was a mere 40,000 people when I was growing up and it is now 80,000

Population Growth 1980-2008 (see Pg. 2):

http://wrdc.usu.edu/files/uploads/Population/Oregon_WEB.pdf