What the South’s population boom means for 2030 redistricting

The South is experiencing a population boom — well outstripping the rest of the country — that could have significant ramifications for political representation next decade.

The Census Bureau released its annual population estimates on Tuesday, finding that the country gained more than 1.6 million people over the past year. That brings the nation to just under 335 million residents.

The country is growing in ways we have not seen since before the pandemic, the agency noted.

“U.S. migration returning to pre-pandemic levels and a drop in deaths are driving the nation’s growth,” Kristie Wilder, a demographer at the agency, said in a release accompanying the data.

But not all growth is created equal. The South — 16 states and D.C. that stretch from Delaware to Texas — added over 1.4 million people in the last year. Roughly half of that new population came not from international immigration or new births, but from “domestic migration” — people moving from other parts of the country to the South. All told, the South has grown by 1.1 percent since 2022. The West and the Midwest both ticked up 0.2 percent, while the Northeast saw a small decline of 0.1 percent in total population.

None of these trends is particularly surprising: The South and the West have for years now been the drivers of America’s growth, at the expense of the Northeast and Midwest.

The top six states that saw the biggest numeric growth are all in the South. Texas led the way with 473,000 people, followed by Florida’s estimated 365,000 head growth. North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee then followed. Arizona, classified as a western state, was seventh.

Eight states saw a net drop in population: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. New York saw the biggest numerical drop at nearly 102,000 people, followed by 75,000 in California.

We still have a long way to go until the next round of congressional apportionment — the process of assigning how many House seats (and Electoral College votes) each state gets after the decennial census — after 2030. But with the massive caveat that these trends could change, these new population estimates point toward the continued shift of congressional representation away from the West Coast and Northeast to the South and West.

Estimates by Fair Lines America Foundation — an arm of the Republican Party’s redistricting apparatus — found that Texas and Florida would be the big winners in the post-2030 apportionment, should these growth trends continue for the rest of the decade. Those two states would pick up four and three seats, respectively.

The big losers would be California (-4 seats), New York (-3) and Illinois (-2). Those shifts aren’t just regional, but also in political power. Democrats have the final say in redistricting in both New York and Illinois (California has an independent commission), while Republicans control the mapmaking process in Florida and Texas.

Republicans in both those states drew fairly efficient gerrymanders to capitalize on each state’s new seats after the most recent apportionment — Texas picked up two seats and Florida got an additional one — an advantage they would love to have again. And while Democratic mapmakers will likely try to draw lines in their states to force Republicans to disproportionately eat any declines, losing seats puts states in a significant bind.

This, of course, can all change over the next seven years, as demographic trends either slow or change. The Covid-era, post-2020 apportionment carried a lot of big surprises, too: Texas only gained two seats, when most estimates had them picking up more, and Arizona stayed flat.

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