Thanks to the gee-whiz nature of the Internet, it is so much easier see in an easy to see and understand nature the changes that have occurred in United States all the way back 100 years.
It is also nice to see that people in our industry are now realizing the various stories that can come from the census data. (Haven't I been saying that for years?)
For political junkies THE story for the next year will be apportionment.
A lot of states will be gaining congressional districts and a lot will be losing seats. See the interative Census map — and click on the APPORTIONMENT tab — to see truly how dramatic the shift is.
One of the really cool things to quickly learn from this map is how each representative district is including more and more people during the past 100 years.
The size of the House of Representatives has not changed — with one small bump in the 1950s — from its current number of 435 for about 100 years. That means that each district is representing more and more people with each Census.
In 1910 each district had 210,328 people in it. By 1960 district size jumped to 410481. And the 2010 Census data show that each member of Congress will represent 710,767 people.
Does that mean we have to expand Congress? Some think so.
What has been missed by many in the reporting — I only heard CBS NEWS mention it briefly yesterday — is that the story is shifting to the state governments. That is where the new congressional districts will be drawn. And yet the focus of political drama from the national news organizations remains in Washington. (Oddly enough during the national reporting of the mid-term elections this year, the national news organizations also paid damn little attention to the power stuggles on the state level despite the connection to how it affects how Congress will look in 2012.)
So, looking for stories? Here is a great national-local story that involves the Census data. (The interactive map makes looking and the gains and losses across the country in the past 100 years really easy. Understanding and explaining what each change means is where the hard work comes in.)