Redistricting season officially kicked off Thursday with the release of detailed population data from the U.S. Census Bureau that will be used to redraw voting districts nationwide — potentially helping determine control of the U.S. House in the 2022 elections.
Census

While suburban congressional districts are swelling with new residents, lawmakers in large swaths of rural America and some Rust Belt cities are in need of more people to represent.

Across the U.S., the growth in the number of people who identified as multiracial on 2020 census responses soared over the last decade, rising from under 3% to more than 10% of the U.S. population from 2010 and 2020.

The Census Bureau on Thursday issued its most detailed portrait yet of how the U.S. has changed over the past decade, releasing a trove of demographic data that will be used to redraw political maps across an increasingly diverse country.

Census Bureau statisticians and outside experts are trying to unravel a mystery: Why were so many questions about households in the 2020 census left unanswered?

President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Census Bureau told a Senate committee on Thursday that he would bring transparency and independence to the nation’s largest statistical agency, which was challenged by the pandemic, natural disasters and attempts at political interference while carrying out the 2020 census.

It won’t be smoke-filled, but members of the Chicago City Council will head to a backroom at City Hall later this month to start crafting new ward boundaries that could shape Chicago politics for the next decade.

Illinois Democrats used inadequate data and an opaque process to draw new legislative districts, a Latino civil rights organization argued in the latest lawsuit seeking to block the maps from being used for statehouse elections over the next decade.
Plus: Our Spotlight Politics team on that and more

The state’s top Republicans asked a federal judge Wednesday to appoint an eight-member commission made up of four Democrats and four Republicans to craft the maps with census data.

It’s a once-in-a-decade fight: We take a look at the proposed new maps of political power and get reaction from Republicans and a coalition of community groups.

A study found that many migrants weren’t driven by new jobs or weather — or even a fear of the virus — but a desire to be closer to family and a freedom to make it happen because of remote working.

A look at the 13 states that will gain or lose political power — and federal money — through the apportionment process because of changes in population over the past decade.

Illinois has now lost a seat in the U.S. House after the past three census counts. The results of the 2020 census continue the steady decline of Illinois’s clout in Washington, D.C., since the size of its House delegation peaked at 27 seats in 1943. In 2022, there will be 17.

Illinois’ General Assembly is charged with drawing new political maps every 10 years following the census. But exactly what the latest census shows about Illinois’ residents is still unknown.

Nearly 80,000 people left Illinois last year, according to just-released data estimates. In the past decade, nearly a quarter million people have moved.

A divided Supreme Court has dismissed as premature a challenge to President Trump’s plan to exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count used to allot states seats in the House of Representatives.