The decennial census determines the allotment of congressional seats among the states. According to Thursday's numbers:
This translates to a net gain of seven seats - and Electoral College votes - in states won by President-elect Bush, and a net loss of seven seats in states won by failed Democrat candidate Al Gore.
The United States Bureau of the Census announced there are 281,421,906 people living in the United States, a 13 percent increase from the 1990 census.
Census 2000 showed that all 50 states gained in population, with Nevada enjoying the largest increase at 66.3 percent. Texas grew enough to displace New York as the No. 2 state in population, after California. Only the District of Columbia has fewer people then 10 years ago, with a population loss of 5.7 percent.
The release of a second round of numbers is scheduled for March 2001. These numbers may or may not include statistically adjusted numbers derived through a technique called sampling. This process is controversial, and congressional Republicans went to court to stop the Clinton administration from using this technique with the Census 2000 numbers.
According to rules put forward by the Department of Commerce several months ago, the director of the Census Bureau will make the final determination whether to use sampling. Liberal black groups have indicated they will make an affirmation of the sampling approach a key issue during the confirmation hearings of Commerce Secretary-designate Don Evans.
Robert Shapiro, the Clinton administration undersecretary of Commerce for economic affairs, claimed statistical sampling was "one of the real civil rights issues of our time" at the news conference where the numbers were released.
Census bureau officials at the news conference said if a decision is made to use sampling, it could produce numbers more accurate than those released Thursday. Census officials and others have claimed that the 1990 head count was off by 12 million people.
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