The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that the 2010 Census showed the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2010, was 308,745,538. That number reflects a noteworthy drop in normal population increase. The population increase was 9.7%. That is the slowest population growth since the decade of the Great Depression. One reason may be the deep recession during the last of the past decade. Illegal immigrants returned home and those considering immigration remained in their home country.
The trend is population movement going south and west. For the first time, the West is more populous than the Midwest, according to 2010 census figures.
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).
Regionally, the South and the West picked up the bulk of the population increase, 14,318,924 and 8,747,621, respectively. But the Northeast and the Midwest also grew: 1,722,862 and 2,534,225.
The census is a constitutionally required exercise.
“As you know the constitutional purpose of the census is the redistribution of the membership of the House of Representatives across states proportional to the population,” continued Groves. “Since 1940 the law has specified that the Census Bureau use the method of equal proportions to assign seats to the states.”
The State of Texas gains four congressional seats. Texas has the biggest gain. Eighth states gained seats, ten states lost seats.
By law, illegal immigrants are counted. This has an effect on the outcome, including producing districts with more than half of the voting age residents ineligible to actually vote.
Several states with large immigration populations, both legal and illegal, will gain at least one seat out of the latest census numbers. They include Florida, Texas, Arizona and Nevada. South Carolina, Georgia and Washington state, which all saw unusually high rates of growth in their immigrant populations over the past decade, will also gain a congressional seat each. South Carolina, for instance, registered a 150 percent increase in its immigrant population, according to a CIS analysis.
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