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Lower turnout in 2012 makes the case for political realignment in 2008

Now that most states have finalized and submitted their official election results (yes, it does take that long), we can take a closer look into state and local turnout rates for the 2012 presidential election.But first, an overview of the results…As we all know, Barack Obama will be starting his second term after he is inaugurated in a […]

Same old story… U.S. is getting older and more diverse

This is my third and final blog post about the Census Bureau’s special report on Patterns of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Population Change: 2000 to 2010.  My first two posts covered information from the first three chapters of the report –  the basic information about urban areas and an overview of their population change in the last […]

Growing number of Virginians with disabilities

We can expect the number of Virginians with disabilities to increase in coming years, leading to increased demands for services such as Social Security Disability or home-health services.  There are for two reasons for this: Increases in life expectancy.  Disability is much more common at older ages; as people live longer, they will be more […]

How close are we, really? Population densities in U.S. Cities

In a previous blog post I talked about a new report from the Census Bureau on patterns of population change in U.S. metropolitan and micropolitan areas from 2000 to 2010. My previous post covered Chapters 1 and 2 of the report, which talk about the basic characteristics of metropolitan areas and give an overview of the population […]

Majority Minority by 2040?

Following the November election, much of the coverage focused on both the current and future impact of changing demographics. Changes in household structure and family formation, population aging, and increases in diversity are population trends that will continue to play out over the coming decades. Virginia’s demographic landscape, like the nation’s, is projected to shift substantially […]

Population Aging and Growing Dependency

Interested in our most recent work on population projections and estimates? See it all here.In addition to producing total population projections for 2020, 2030, and 2040 for Virginia and its localities, we also produced projections of future population by age, sex, and race, and by age, sex, and ethnicity. Today, I want to highlight the […]

Virginia Population Projections

Interested in our most recent work on population projections and estimates? See it all here.We’ve just released the new 30-year population projections for Virginia, its 134 localities, 22 planning districts, and large towns  – projections of total population; population by age, sex, and race; and population by age, sex, and ethnicity. So there’s a lot […]

Virginia Votes 2012: Turnout across localities

About two-thirds of Virginians voted last Tuesday! 65.3% of eligible Virginians voted in last week’s presidential election (based on unofficial results and an estimate of the number of eligible voters in Virginia*).  This represents a modest decline from 2008, when 66.7% of eligible Virginians voted, but the drop off in 2012 is minor at less than 2% […]

Virginia Votes 2012

Now that the votes are cast, we have some real electoral data to explore. My first question was how the distribution of Obama’s vote in Virginia in 2012 compared to 2008.Using the unofficial results currently reported by Virginia’ State Board of Elections (with 2,573 of 2,588 precincts reporting), I plotted the percent of votes cast […]

Forget Ohio, it’s all about Virginia…and demographics

In my humble opinion, the biggest news coming out of the election last night was not Ohio.  Instead, the polling results coming out of Virginia, that heavily favored Obama early in the evening, set the tone for the entire night.  The story of what happened in Virginia exemplifies where our politics in this country now […]