If lawmakers were to do redistricting this year (based on mid-2007 estimates from the Census Bureau, the latest available), the average House district would have about 20,000 more people in it than in 2000. And the migration of political power from rural areas to populated areas — especially suburbs — would be particularly painful for rural Texas.
Do the math to see which counties would gain seats in that hypothetical drawing and Collin, Denton, Fort Bend, Williamson, and Montgomery counties rise to the top. Each — depending on rounding and whether and how districts cross county line — would gain a seat in the Texas House. Most of the losses would be spread across rural Texas; for the most part, those multi-county districts would have to grow in geographic size, diluting local interests, to keep up with the numbers. But some losers are clear: Dallas County would lose a seat, and El Paso and Jefferson counties would lose some clout, too. You don't have to lose population to lose power in this arithmetic; growing more slowly than the rest of the state is enough to do the damage.
The trend is similar but less clear in the state Senate, where districts are bigger and the chance of a county getting a whole new Senate seat are small. The size of the average district would jump to 771,109 from 672,638 if the 2007 estimates were used. That's 98,470 more people in each senator's district, and rural district lines will have to be stretched to find sufficient population (at the time they're drawn, districts have to be equal in size).
Congressional seats work a little differently. If Texas gains three seats (we're growing while other states grow less quickly or shrink), one will probably go in the Collin-Denton county area. Another would probably go to the vicinity of Harris/Fort Bend counties. Rural congressional districts in Texas would get bigger, geographically, to make up for lost population. Tarrant and Bexar counties probably wouldn't get entire new seats, but their increases might ensure that seats they share with others were dominated by those urban centers. Same with Travis and Williamson counties, which are adjacent.
Huge areas of Texas — 118 of 254 counties — lost population between the 2000 census and mid-2007, according to the Census Bureau's estimates. Only 31 of the state's counties grew faster than the state as a whole, and they tended to be larger counties. Only four of the state's 15 biggest counties missed that growth mark and one of them — Bexar County — only missed by a tenth of a percent. Those counties will be first in line to gain seats, since they grew the most on both a percentage and raw number basis. Only five of the 50 largest counties lost population, although 28 of that top 50 grew more slowly than the state as a whole.
This is early and highly speculative. The trends are clear, but the specifics will change when the real 2010 census numbers are in and when the real political work is done on redistricting — when creative people bend the demographic facts to their advantage, or try to.
