Summit County Citizens Voice

Colorado won’t gain any seats in Congress

A U.S. Census Bureau map shows gains in Congressional seats for some western and southern states.

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — Colorado gained between 500,000 and 1 million new residents million residents between 2000 and 2010, but that won’t be enough for the state to gain another seat in Congress, according to the official U.S. census data released today (Dec. 21). The state’s population edged just over 5 million, according to the 2009 Census Bureau estimate.

The U.S. population as a whole grew about 9.7 percent between 2000 and 2010, from 281 million in 2000 to 308.7 million, for the slowest growth rate since the Great Depression. The South was the fastest growing region, at 14.3 percent, and the West wasn’t far behind, at 13.8 percent.

Get all the info as it’s released at the Census Bureau website.

A lot of information is streaming from journalists and analysts at Twitter under the #census hashtag.

Texas will pick up four new seats in Congress based on population growth and Florida will pick up two. In the West, Washington, Nevada, Utah and Arizona will each pick up one seat, along with South Carolina and Georgia in the South.

New York and Ohio will lose two seats, while several other midwestern and eastern states, alone with Louisiana will lose one seat.

The most populous state was California (37,253,956); the least populous, Wyoming (563,626). The state that gained the most numerically since the 2000 Census was Texas (up 4,293,741 to 25,145,561) and the state that gained the most as a percentage of its 2000 Census count was Nevada (up 35.1% to 2,700,551).

Just before today’s announcement, the Census Bureau delivered the apportionment counts to President Obama, 10 days before the statutory deadline of Dec. 31. The apportionment totals are calculated to divide among the states the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The apportionment population consists of the resident population of the 50 states, plus the overseas military and federal civilian employees and their dependents living with them who could be allocated to a state. Each member of the House represents, on average, about 710,767 people. The populations of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are excluded from the apportionment population, as they do not have voting seats in Congress.

“The decennial count has been the basis for our representative form of government since 1790,” Census Bureau director Robert Groves said. “At that time, each member of the House represented about 34,000 residents. Since then, the House has more than quadrupled in size, with each member now representing about 21 times as many constituents.”

President Obama will transmit the apportionment counts to the 112th Congress during the first week of its first regular session in January. The reapportioned Congress will be the 113th, which convenes in January 2013.

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