The biggest losers in population continue to be high-tax, high cost-of-living states like Ca. and NY. Meanwhile, here is the list of the top five states which have gained population:Texas (218,745), Fla. (165,757), Ariz. (129,987), Ga. (120,953), N.C. (104,133). What are the political implications? Michael Barone:

Mickey Kaus in an early morning post notes that one blogger predicts the Republicans will pick up 10 House seats and 10 electoral votes after the 2010 census…Mickey is right to suggest that not all the new districts will go Republican. Currently, Republicans seem solidly in control of the redistricting process, with the governorships and both houses of the legislatures in Texas, Florida, and Georgia. That could conceivably change by 2010. But the biggest population gains in those states are (with the exception of Austin’s Travis County) in heavily Republican areas.

Even so, the current districting plans in those states are so heavily tilted toward Republicans that even with Republicans in control, Democrats could wind up with a new seat or two in each (as they did in Arizona, where Republicans controlled the process in 2001-02 but could not do better than replacing a 5-1 Republican plan with a 6-2 Republican plan). Additional seats in Nevada and Utah would probably be Republican, but not reliably so in Nevada. An additional seat in North Carolina could go Democratic; Democrats controlled the districting process there in 2001-02 and are in a reasonably good position to do so again in 2011-12. Bottom line: The reapportionment after the 2010 census will be good news for Republicans, but not quite as good as Influence Peddler suggests.

We’ll just wait and see.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 1st, 2007 at 8:21 am and is filed under Democrats, General, Polling, Red Shift, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.