Analysis: What the census results tell us about the future American electorate
Non-Hispanic white Americans now make up less than 60% of the population. About 57% if we count Puerto Rico or just under 58% without counting it. The latter is down from around 64% after the 2010 census. This is also down from the 69% recorded in the 2000 census.
The share of the population that is becoming less non-Hispanic white is not just something that happens in one state. This is happening in most of the country. In fact, there is only one state (Maine) in which 90% or more of the population is non-Hispanic white.
Indeed, there are now six states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico where non-Hispanic whites make up less than 50% of the population. This includes California, the nation’s most populous state, where Hispanics are now the majority at 39%.
Instead, Hispanics make up 20% of the country’s population, including Puerto Rico, and 19% without including it. Hispanics made up just 13% of Americans in 2000.
As for how this may affect politics, the trend line and implications are clear. The winning candidates will have one of two options going forward.
In other words, you might expect this diversity trend to be helpful to Democrats, but there’s no guarantee it will.
Adults (18 or older) now make up 78% of all Americans. Children (those under 18) represent only 22%. At the last census, adults made up 76% of Americans. In 2000, they were 74%.
We’ve seen the last two men to become president rely on older voters to win their primaries. Winning candidates in the future would be well advised to understand that power in the electorate will increasingly come from older voters.
These older and younger voters will be concentrated in fewer places than before. According to the census, 52% of the counties in the country have a population lower than that of 2010.
Places that had a lot of people or were gaining people continue to do so.
On the larger trend line, 312 of the country’s 386 metropolitan areas have larger populations than at the start of the last decade. Many of the places that saw an increase in population were in the diversifying South and West, as they were in the last census.
We’re seeing Democrats increasingly competitive in these places, as exemplified by President Joe Biden becoming the first Democrat to win Arizona and Georgia at the presidential level since the 1990s.
We may soon find that the contested battlegrounds in our elections are not Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Rather, they will be the Arizonas and Georgias of the world.
Of course, there were places that maybe didn’t fit the picture so well.
Northeastern New York City, which has suffered greatly during the coronavirus pandemic in which much of the census took place, continues to be the largest city in the country. With 8.8 million inhabitants, it is recorded as the most populous American city of all time.
New York proves that not all expectations are always met.