POPULATION GROWTH
What will new census mean in Washington, Harrisburg?
Chester County’s population grew at a fast clip over the past 10 years along with other so-called “collar counties” in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania, according to U.S. Census figures.
And in addition to outpacing by a significant amount the growth in the state as a whole, the county is growing more racially diverse — in line with the state and the nation, according to those figures.
But what the numbers will mean over the course of the coming years remains to be seen. They will play a major role in what the county’s representation in Harrisburg and Washington will look like, according to those observers paying attention to the county’s redistricting possibilities.
Census data is used for a variety of initiatives, including federal funding for education, housing and community development, among others. Among its primary purpose, however, is to distribute the numbers of members of the U.S. House of Representatives the state sends to the Capitol, and how the county is carved up to elect members of the state’s General Assembly.
It is already clear that Pennsylvania will lose one congressional seat, bringing the number of districts down to 17 for the 2022 election. The number of state Senate and state House districts will remain the same. (Chester County has four state Senators — two who live in the county — and nine state House members.)
Observers, however, believe that the county will likely continue to be represented by a single Congressional District, as it has since the lines were last drawn — though controversially — in 2018.
“We really don’t know what the maps will look like,” said Carol Kuniholm, the chairwoman of the group Fair Districts PA, which has lobbied against legislative gerrymandering across the state for years in a nonpartisan movement. “The people who draw them still have to have their say.”
She said it is probable, however, that instead of the three Congressional Districts that were present in the early 2010s — filled by residents of Chester County, Delaware County and Lancaster County — the establishment of a single county district — the 6th, now held by Democrat Chrissy Houlahan — will likely continue because of the county’s significant population.
“The county should be a large piece of one single district, and not be divided into multiple districts,” said Kuniholm, who lives in Uwchlan. To break it up again would be “completely unacceptable,” she declared.
Also deemed unacceptable in Kuniholm’s eyes is the wholesale division of individual school districts in the county into differing state Senate and House districts. She noted that in 2011 and 2012 when the last redistricting effort took place, school boundaries in places like West Chester and Phoenixville were cut up among as many as five different districts. She is expectant that those doing the redrawing will back off that practice.
“It makes no sense,” she said last week. “We hope that the legislative reapportionment commission will be more conscientious in its approach this time.”
To be sure, there will almost certainly be a fight in Harrisburg over what map the county falls under, both congressionally and legislatively.
In comments, former state Rep. Eric Roe of East Marlborough, a Republican who had pushed for redistricting reform while he served in Harrisburg, said that “the ugly truth about redistricting is that both parties love gerrymandering. Any attempt to reform the process will be met with opposition primarily from party leadership in both parties — not necessarily from the average rank-and-file legislator.
The processes for state legislative redistricting and Congressional redistricting are different.
For Congressional districts, the state Legislature passes a bill that the governor may sign or veto. By contrast, state legislative districts are drawn by a commission of two Republicans, two Democrats, and a tiebreaking appointee from the state Supreme Court. As Roe stated, since the Supreme Court is overwhelmingly Democratic and has a strong liberal bent, that appointee will likely favor maps that benefit Democratic candidates and legislators.
“For Chester County specifically, I hope that we will soon have two state senate districts entirely within our county instead of four districts that spill into neighboring Delaware, Montgomery and Berks counties,” he said. “I will not hold my breath for that though.”
He predicted Democrats will likely “crack” the county by placing its Republican neighborhoods into Democratic districts represented by state senators who live in Montgomery County — state Sen. Katie Muth, D-44th, or have Delaware County bases — state Sens. John Kane, D-9th, of and Tim Kearney, D26th. (Kane lives in Chester County, but his district encompasses a lot of its neighbor.)
“Then the left-leaning commission will likely ‘pack’ Carolyn Comitta’s district with as many Democratic-leaning neighborhoods in Chester County as they can, in order to make her seat safer for her,” he said. “Since the state Senate maps already accomplish this ‘cracking and packing’ in a way that benefits Democrats, I doubt they will change very much.”
He said he expects either Chester or Delaware county to gain at least one new state House seat. “If that happens, it will cause all the neighboring districts to shrink in size, both geographically and demographically,” he said.
Roe said it was “anyone’s guess” how the 6th Congressional District will be drawn, but predicted that negotiators in Harrisburg would make that a deal to keep Houlahan’s district more Democratic, in exchange for making the 1st Congressional District in Bucks County, now held by GOP U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, more Republican.
From 2010 to 2020, according to the census figures released on Aug. 12, the county grew 7.1 percent, from 498,886 residents to 534,413. The fourth fastest in the state. It outpaced Philadelphia, which grew at a 5.1 percent clip, and the state itself, which grew by only 2.4 percent. The state now has 13,002,700 residents.
The county remains overwhelmingly white in terms of race and ethnicity, although the number of those identifying themselves as white dropped from 426,707 in 2010 to 413,103. Likewise, the number of residents saying they were Black or African-American alone, rather than biracial, dropped from 30,623 to 29,526, a decline of 3.6 percent.
The growth in population then came from those identifying as Asian, Hispanic, Latino, or biracial. The number of residents of Asian descent — including those from Japan, China and Korea, as well as those from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — grew from 19,296 in 2020, when they made up just under 4 percent of the population, to 35,252, an increase of 15,956, or 82.7 percent.
Those calling themselves Hispanic or Latino grew by 8.1 percent, to 45,542, the greatest number of minority residents in the county. Those identifying as being of two or more races grew from 9,030, or 1.8 percent of the population, to 36,071, or 6.7 percent. That change, however, may be reflected more in the way a respondent described themselves than growth in new residents.
“For Chester County specifically, I hope that we will soon have two state senate districts entirely within our county instead of four districts that spill into neighboring Delaware, Montgomery and Berks counties. I will not hold my breath for that though.”
— Former state Rep. Eric Roe of East Marlborough