Census Shocker

Preliminary census numbers for Michigan are coming out today.

Census shocker: Detroit's population falls to 713,000
Interactive map: 2010 Census information, by state

Michigan's population was earlier announced to be 9883640, down .6% from 2000.

This means that the ideal district sizes are
Congress: 705,974
State senate: 260,096
State house: 89,851

The new number coming out...
Detroit: 713,777, down 25.3% from 952047.

— Oakland County saw its population grow from 1,194,196 to 1,202,362. [up .6%]
— Wayne County's dropped from 2,061,162 to 1,820,584. [down 11.7%]
— Macomb County's population grew from 788,149 to 840,978. [up 6.7%]
— Livingston County's population grew from 156,951 to 180,967. [up 15.3%]

The size of Detroit's population loss is shocking and deserves more detailed analysis later.

Implications. Detroit has fallen so much that it may be hard to draw two black-majority congressional districts, even if they extend outside Wayne County. I don't think there is precedent for losing a black-majority congressional district.

Wayne County will lose a full state senate district, dropping from 8 t0 7. That loss will be almost entirely in Detroit. Drawing five black-majority districts will be impossible, and even four may be tricky. That district will move somewhere else in the state, and the map will have to be considerably reshuffled to accommodate it.

Wayne County will lose three state house districts, at least two coming from Detroit. It will drop from 23 to 20. Three districts will move elsewhere in the state. One will probably end up in Macomb County, one in the Livingston/Washtenaw area, and one in the Kent/Ottowa area. At least two of these should be gains for Republicans.

Genessee County: down to 425790 from 436141. It will have fewer than the current five state house districts since it falls below the minimum threshold. Flint likely accounts for most of this loss.

Kalamazoo County: up to 250331 from 238603. Kalamazoo County will likely be its own state senate district, now that it is above the minimum threshold. This could be trouble for state senator Tonya Schuitmaker, who represents all of Kalamazoo but lives in VanBuren.

More later...