New US census figures

These new figures are quite interesting.
Three states — Florida, California and Texas — would account for nearly one-half (46 percent) of total U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2030, according to Census Bureau state population projections released today. Consequently, Florida, now the fourth most populous state, would edge past New York into third place in total population by 2011; California and Texas would continue to rank first and second, respectively, in 2030.

These three states would each gain more than 12 million people between 2000 and 2030. Arizona, projected to add 5.6 million people, and North Carolina, with 4.2 million, would round out the top five numerical gainers. As a result, Arizona and North Carolina would move into the top 10 in total population by 2030 — Arizona rising from 20th place in 2000 to 10th place in 2030 and North Carolina from 11th place to seventh place. Michigan and New Jersey are projected to drop out of the top 10.

The projections indicate that the top five fastest-growing states between 2000 and 2030 would be Nevada (114 percent), Arizona (109 percent), Florida (80 percent), Texas (60 percent) and Utah (56 percent).
USA Today's table has the important results, and from here we can work out some interesting things:

The population of traditional Red states (states that have gone Republican at least four of the last five Presidential elections) will be projected at 150.3 million, out of a projected 363.6 million.
This is horribly bad news for the Democrats, because theoretically it means that safe Republican states add up to enough percentage of the population to win 222 electoral votes - and not among these safe Republican states are places like West Virginia, Lousiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee that Bush won by more than 8% after winning in 2000 - add those and all of a sudden you've got 175.9 million people - enough to give the Republicans mathematically 260 electoral votes in the bag as long as they continue to hold their stronghold states.
That's just one small-medium state, or 10 votes from victory.

New England stands to lose about 20 percent of its congressional seats over the next quarter-century as political power follows population booms in the South and West: AP
Again, horribly bad news for the Democrats. They've shown themselves virtually incapable of winning states in the South, and their main electoral vote base is going to lose 20 percent of its Congressional states, meaning they'll lose a very similar amount of electoral college votes. But how are they going to get the extra votes they'll need when those votes will be almost all in the South - where the Democrats seemingly don't even try anymore? Howard Dean can talk all he likes about trying to win in 40+ states, but with quotes like "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.", you're not likely to get anywhere.

So where to for the Democrats? For starters, electing a North-Eastern liberal as your party chief isn't a good move if you want to win votes in the South. Even worse is electing a high-brow North-Eastern liberal as your Presidential candidate. They haven't won the White House in 44 years. The classic quote "That Northeast liberal thing hasn’t panned out for us lately" could not be more accurate. Considering it comes from a DNC fundraiser, the party could do a lot dumber things than listen to him.

In fact, they've consistently done a lot dumber things over the past 5 years.

(Cross-posted to The House Of Wheels.)

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