Census: Connecticut’s population grew by 1 percent in the last decade
WASHINGTON — Connecticut had the fourth smallest population growth of any state from 2010 to 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau revealed Monday in its first announcement of the results of the 2020 census.
Connecticut will maintain the same number of congressional seats, but its resident population increased by 1 percent from 2010 to 2020.
Utah saw the greatest population increase of any state at 18 percent, followed by Texas and then North Dakota. West Virginia, Illinois and Mississippi lost population.
The data released by the Census Bureau Monday showed seven states — New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — will lose one seat in Congress. Six states will gain seats. Texas will add two seats, while Colorado, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Oregon will gain one seat.
In addition, states that are gaining seats in Congress will also get additional Electoral College votes for the presidential elections.
State Rep. Gregg Haddad, D-Mansfield, who co-chairs the state Reapportionment Committee, said he was “relieved” that Connecticut did not lose a congressional seat.
“We stayed at the status quo,” Haddad said. “I think that all things considered that’s a good thing.”
The U.S. Census was conducted in 2020 for the first time in 10 years with the pandemic posing new challenges to data collection. The data collected will determine apportionment of congressional and state legislative seats, the distribution of Electoral College votes and impact federal funding for states and localities.
The data released by the Census Bureau on Monday showed Connecticut had
3,605,944 residents living in the state and 2,354 overseas residents on April 1, 2020. The actual population gain over the decade for people living in the state was 31,847.
Connecticut’s population growth trailed that of the Northeast, which had a 4 percent increase from 2010 to 2020. The national population
increase was 7 percent.
“Connecticut tended to be unaffordable,” Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, another co-chair of the Reapportionment Committee. “We’re dead last in job growth and personal income growth, so there is no future for our youth... the good paying jobs aren’t here so they go somewhere else.”
Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, who directed state level outreach for the U.S. Census, speculated that if the count reflected the state’s population after April 1, 2020, Connecticut might have seen a greater increase in population.
“I would be curious to see what our count is for 2021 because we know anecdotally that we’ve been getting more people coming to our state and registering to vote, buying homes — people from New York, people from Massachusetts,” Bysiewicz said. “I think we probably have a greater increase than the 1 percent that the Census Bureau is reporting.”
Kelly warned these new residents might be “shortlived” if Connecticut approves
more tax increases.
The Census Bureau has said it will deliver the full data set used for redrawing political maps to the state by the end of September, but it could be available in some form by mid-August. That information will show exactly where the state’s population increases and declines took place. It also means we may not have the final district maps that will be used for the 2022 elections until close to the end of the year.
In Connecticut, the drawing of legislative and congressional district lines is largely the responsibility of the General Assembly.
The state’s Reapportionment Committee, which is supposed to recommend new maps to the legislature, held its first organizational meeting on Monday morning. The bipartisan committee acknowledged that the delay in the release of complete Census figures will make their once-a-decadework harder.
Haddad and Kelly said the next step for the committee will be organizing public hearings around redistricting.
“Obviously with this year and the challenges associated with COVID we are going to have to work and get through those challenges and see what it will look like, but we do want to make sure that we get as much public input as possible,” Kelly said.
Due to delays in distributing the census data, the committee may be dissolved before it can complete its work. The state constitution says the committee must be dissolved by Sept. 15. At that time, it would be replaced by a similar Commission which would have until Nov. 30 to finish the work.
The pandemic delayed field operations for the U.S. Census data collection. The data is collected by surveying all U.S. residents once every 10 years. For the first time in 2020, the Census Bureau permitted online data collection in addition to mail and phone.
Some have questioned whether the pandemic and President Donald Trump’s failed push to add a U.S. citizenship question to the census would decrease participation in the 2020
census and reduce the accuracy of the data.
Connecticut spent $500,000 on bolstering outreach for the U.S. Census, with a focus on reaching “hard to count” communities like people who do not speak English, parents of young children and the homeless. Nearly every town formed its own volunteer committee focused on getting the word out with the pandemic.
Connecticut’s $500,000 investment is a far cry from the $70 million New York allocated for its count efforts and $187 million California spent — both states that lost Congressional seats. Texas — which gained two seats — spent nothing on outreach.
“If population trends continue, it’s easy to see Connecticut on the bubble and possibly losing a seat,” Haddad said. “Certainly in the future, it’s clear that we are on a trajectory that we want to change and we should do all we can do to bolster the count in 10 years.”