[WAPO] In response to Post opinion writer Paul Waldman’s essay about the current power of the minority in American politics, the American Enterprise Institute’s Norman Ornstein offered a stunning bit of data on Twitter.
In broad strokes, Ornstein is correct.
The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service of the University of Virginia analyzed Census Bureau population projections to estimate each state’s likely population in 2040, including the expected breakdown of the population by age and gender. Although that data was released in 2016, before the bureau revised its estimates for the coming decades, we see that, in fact, the population will be heavily centered in a few states.
Eight states will have just under half of the total population of the country, 49.5 percent, according to the Weldon Cooper Center’s estimate. The next eight most populous states will account for an additional fifth of the population, up to 69.2 percent ‐ meaning that the 16 most populous states will be home to about 70 percent of Americans. |