Key figures: U.S. Census Bureau, Robert Groves (Director, 2009–2012), U.S. Congressional Apportionment Commission
Background and Legal Mandate
Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution mandates a decennial enumeration of the population for the purpose of apportioning representatives among the states. The 2010 Census was the 23rd such count since the first was conducted in 1790. It was officially conducted with April 1, 2010 as the reference date — meaning the Census counted each person at the residence where they lived on that date.
The Census Bureau allocated approximately $13 billion for the 2010 count — the most expensive in U.S. history to that point. The Bureau hired approximately 635,000 temporary workers to conduct follow-up interviews with households that had not returned mailed questionnaires, which it called Non-Response Followup (NRFU) operations. The initial mail-back response rate was approximately 72 percent, slightly above the 2000 rate of 67 percent, reducing the scale of required field operations.
The 2010 Census used a shorter questionnaire than its predecessor: ten questions on the short-form, with no long-form supplement. The American Community Survey (ACS) — first piloted in 2000 — replaced the long form, collecting detailed socioeconomic data from approximately 3.5 million households per year on a rolling basis rather than every ten years.
Population Totals and Growth
The Census recorded a resident U.S. population of 308,745,538, representing a 9.7 percent increase from the 2000 count of 281,421,906 — an absolute gain of 27,323,632 people over the decade. Growth was the slowest since the 1930s, when the Great Depression and low immigration rates suppressed population increase.
State-by-State Growth Leaders
The ten fastest-growing states by percentage:
| State | 2000 Population | 2010 Population | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nevada | 1,998,257 | 2,700,551 | 35.1% |
| Arizona | 5,130,632 | 6,392,017 | 24.6% |
| Utah | 2,233,169 | 2,763,885 | 23.8% |
| Idaho | 1,293,953 | 1,567,582 | 21.1% |
| Texas | 20,851,820 | 25,145,561 | 20.6% |
Texas’s absolute gain of 4,293,741 people was the largest of any state — more than the total population of Oregon. Nevada’s 35.1 percent rate was the highest in the nation despite its smaller base.
Ten states and the District of Columbia either lost population or grew at rates below 2 percent, led by Michigan (−0.6%), Rhode Island (+0.4%), and Louisiana (+1.4%, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 displacement effects).
Racial and Ethnic Composition
The 2010 Census documented continuing and accelerating diversification of the American population:
Hispanic or Latino population: 50,477,594 (16.3% of total), up from 35,305,818 in 2000 — an increase of 43.0 percent. The Hispanic population accounted for 56 percent of the nation’s total population growth between 2000 and 2010. Mexicans were the largest Hispanic-origin group (63%), followed by Puerto Ricans (9.2%) and Cubans (3.5%). Texas, California, Florida, and New York held the largest Hispanic populations; Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado had the fastest Hispanic growth rates.
Asian population: 17,320,856 (5.6%), up from 11,898,828 in 2000 — an increase of 43.3 percent. Chinese Americans (3,794,673), Filipino Americans (3,416,840), and Indian Americans (3,183,063) were the three largest subgroups.
Black or African American population: 38,929,319 (12.6%), up from 34,658,190 in 2000 — a 12.3 percent increase. For the first time since the Great Migration of the early 20th century, the Black population grew faster in the South than in the Northeast and Midwest, reversing a decades-long trend.
White alone (non-Hispanic): 196,817,552 (63.7%), down from 69.1 percent in 2000. This was the first Census in which non-Hispanic whites constituted less than two-thirds of the total population.
Multiracial population: 9,009,073 Americans identified with two or more racial categories — a 32 percent increase from 2000, reflecting both demographic change and increasing social acceptance of multiracial identification.
Housing and Household Data
The 2010 Census counted 131,704,730 housing units in the United States, up from 115,904,641 in 2000 — a 13.6 percent increase. The national vacancy rate was 11.4 percent, the highest ever recorded, reflecting the aftermath of the 2007–2009 housing bubble collapse and foreclosure crisis. In some Sun Belt markets, vacancy rates exceeded 20 percent.
The average household size was 2.58 persons, essentially unchanged from 2.59 in 2000, but masking important compositional shifts: married-couple households declined as a share, while single-person households and unmarried-partner households increased. The number of multi-generational households (three or more generations) rose 10.5 percent since 2000, driven in part by economic pressures following the financial crisis — a trend also documented by the Dodd-Frank Act’s regulatory focus on household credit access.
Congressional Reapportionment
The Constitution requires reapportionment of the 435 House seats following each Census. The 2010 Census produced the following changes:
States gaining seats:
- Texas: +4 (29 → 33 seats)
- Florida: +2 (25 → 27 seats)
- Arizona: +1
- Georgia: +1
- Nevada: +1
- South Carolina: +1
- Utah: +1
- Washington: +1
States losing seats:
- New York: −2 (29 → 27 seats)
- Ohio: −2 (18 → 16 seats)
- Illinois: −1
- Iowa: −1
- Louisiana: −1
- Massachusetts: −1
- Michigan: −1
- Missouri: −1
- New Jersey: −1
- Pennsylvania: −1
The Electoral College consequently shifted: states gaining representation added electoral votes, while those losing representation reduced their totals. Texas moved from 34 to 38 electoral votes; New York from 31 to 29. The net effect moved 6 electoral votes from reliably Democratic-leaning northeastern and midwestern states toward competitive or Republican-leaning southern and western states — a structural advantage that shaped presidential electoral math through the 2012 and 2016 cycles.
Political Implications: Redistricting and the 2010 Midterms
Congressional and state legislative district boundaries are redrawn following each Census by state legislatures (in most states). The 2010 midterm elections — held seven months before the Census results’ redistricting timeline — took on outsized importance because control of state legislatures would determine who drew the new maps. See 2010 US midterm elections.
Republicans won control of 29 state legislative chambers in the November 2010 elections, gaining approximately 680 state legislative seats — the largest single-cycle gain in modern history. This gave Republicans control of redistricting in key swing states including Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Florida. The resulting maps, drawn in 2011 and used through the 2020 election cycle, were widely analyzed as producing significant structural Republican advantages in House elections — a phenomenon sometimes called REDMAP (Redistricting Majority Project), named for the coordinated Republican strategy to target state legislative races in 2010 specifically to control post-Census redistricting.
The Census data also informed Affordable Care Act implementation: population figures updated federal funding formulas for Medicaid eligibility and health-exchange enrollment targets by state.
Significance
The 2010 Census was a demographic inflection point that crystallized long-developing trends:
The Sunbelt consolidation: For decades, economic and demographic gravity had been shifting from the industrial Midwest and Northeast toward the South and West. The 2010 Census quantified this shift at its clearest: Texas alone contributed more population growth than New York and Ohio combined. The pattern reflected long-term drivers — climate preference, lower cost of living, favorable state tax environments, and energy-sector employment — that would continue through 2020.
The majority-minority trajectory: The Census established that, at current growth rates, the United States would become a majority-minority nation (no single racial group over 50%) within approximately three decades. Subsequent projections from the Pew Research Center and Census Bureau placed this threshold around 2045. This demographic reality became a central organizing fact in political debates about immigration, voting rights, education, and social services throughout the 2010s.
Housing crisis visibility: The record 11.4 percent vacancy rate made the physical devastation of the housing bubble visible at a national scale. Combined with the global unemployment and economic recovery data of the same year — with the U.S. unemployment rate at 9.6 percent — the Census painted a statistical portrait of an economy still severely damaged two years after the financial crisis.
Redistricting and structural electoral consequences: The combination of Census results and Republican midterm success produced district maps that, according to multiple academic analyses, gave Republicans a structural advantage of 15–25 House seats in subsequent elections independent of vote share. The long-run impact of this one demographic snapshot persisted through the entire decade.