Updated 9 a.m. 12/21/10
How excited are you about the political impact of the decennial Census results that are coming out this morning?
Well, the U.S. Census is all aflutter about the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives and has put together a jazzy little video about what's going to go down.
Key take home: What's happening today is apportionment, the distribution of the 435 House seats between the 50 states (or rather, of 385 seats, as each state gets at least one seat, eliminating 50 from the process). That will be followed over the course of the year by redistricting, which is the much more cumbersome and variable and protracted process by which each state will decide the geographic boundaries for their House seats over the course of 2011.
Notably, this is the first apportionment to take place in the blog and social media era, and so seems likely to draw broader public attention than past shifts, such as the reassignment of 12 seats between states in 2000.
National Journal's Richard E. Cohen has written the definitive take on the redistricting battles to come and the struggle to get more seats drawn in a way favorable to Latinos as their share of the population has increased.