Ector County appears to be among the top ten fastest growing counties in Texas during the past decade, a population surge primarily due to an increase in Hispanic residents, Lloyd Potter, director of the Texas Demographic Center told the Texas House of Representatives’ Committee on Redistricting on Thursday.

Although official 2020 census figures won’t be ready until late September, studies conducted by his office since 2016 indicates that Hispanics have accounted for more than half of the estimated 4 million population increase that Texas is expected to see since 2010, Potter said.

So, the Texanist reached out to Lloyd Potter, the official demographer for the State of Texas. Potter, a judicious but genial sort, confirmed for the Texanist that the annual U-Haul report is “probably not the most definitive source of migration data,” and noted correctly that “not all movers rent from U-Haul.”

Potter didn’t yet have any solid data for 2020, but he did direct the Texanist to some eyebrow-raising U.S Census Bureau statistics from the prior year. It turns out that in 2019 Texas had a net migration deficit with Tennessee. That year about 15,000 Texans relocated to the Volunteer State while only 10,000 or so Tennesseans volunteered (rim shot) to move to Texas. Tennessee was, in fact, the second-largest contributor to Texas’s net loss migration in 2019.

But after witnessing a total collapse of the state’s infrastructure, corporations that need reliable sources of power and water to fuel their operations may rethink making the move, unless those concerns are somehow alleviated, warned Lloyd Potter, the Texas state demographer and a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

That subsequent loss of high-paying, high-skilled jobs would deal a blow to Texans across the board, Potter said, but especially to those who are lower on the socioeconomic spectrum.

“In terms of magnitude and severity, [this] was, you know, more than anything we’ve experienced historically,” he said. “The fallout of not addressing it would be potentially pretty, pretty strong.”

A Texas Senate committee on Friday heard public testimony from Houston residents who urged lawmakers to eliminate partisan gerrymandering when drawing district maps this legislative session.

Invited speakers were joined by members of the public to testify at a Texas Senate Committee for Redistricting hearing about the impacts of current district lines in the area. The committee on Friday focused on maps encompassing the city of Houston and surrounding areas.

Dr. Lloyd Potter from the Texas Demographic Center, who has provided testimony at every redistricting meeting so far this session, looked at 2020 Census data projections for the Houston region and found that the speed at which some local population changes have taken place would require special attention during the redistricting process.

Rick Perry famously called West Texas—a sparse land with few trees or humans—the Big Empty. The 92,016 square miles of the High Plains, the Panhandle, and western Hill Country have an estimated population of 2.2 million, less than that of Houston. But the region is also some of the most fertile Republican territory in Texas. The Big Empty delivered 78 percent of its vote to Donald Trump last year and elected three Republicans to Congress—all of whom supported overturning the president’s reelection loss in Pennsylvania and then opposed impeaching him on charges of inciting the Capitol riot in January.

The dilemma of the Big Empty is an example of how difficult it will be for Republicans to create the kind of partisan gerrymanders that have contributed to the large majority in the state’s House delegation that they enjoy today. Texas’s population has grown by 4.2 million since the 2010 census, according to the state demographer, Lloyd Potter, but that growth has not been where Republicans need it. Potter recently told a state Senate redistricting committee that most new Texans live in a triangle anchored by Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio, and encompassing Austin. That triangle is home to the bulk of the state’s Democratic voters: the counties of those five cities went for Biden by 20 percentage points. Trying to redraw districts in the triangle, let alone fitting new ones in, will be a challenge for the GOP.

East Texans who spoke at a public hearing of the Special Senate Committee on Redistricting Friday, Jan. 29, each called for a fair drawing of lines and an end to gerrymandering.

At the hearing, Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter gave preliminary numbers for the East Texas region, based on 2020 estimates. Henderson County is in the middle range of total population growth, but closer to the top of the state’s counties in percentage population growth.

Hearings began last week in Austin that will bear on how much political representation Kerr County citizens will have in Washington, D.C., the Texas Legislature and State Board of Education.

At stake is more than $1.5 trillion in federal funds to support state and local programs related to health care, education, transportation and other services, Lloyd Potter, Texas State demographer and director of Texas Demographic Center/State Data Center, said during a Jan. 28 state senate committee hearing on redistricting in Central Texas.

“For Texas to receive our fair share of tax dollars that we’ve sent to Washington — to receive those back — we want to make sure all Texans are counted and we get our fair share of resources for programs like health care, transportation and education,” Potter said during the hearing.

One of the most important things Texas lawmakers will do this session is redraw congressional and state districts. The Senate Special Committee on Redistricting started meeting this week to learn about the growth in each region of the state.

They're learning from State Demographer Lloyd Potter, Ph.D., who spoke with KVUE's Ashley Goudeau about the growth of the state and how it could impact politics.

The Census Bureau’s late delivery of redistricting data will trigger a cascade of delays across the country, potentially complicating the mapmaking process in many states and delaying local elections.

Other states have constitutional or statutory deadlines to finish the mapmaking process that the late redistricting data could scramble. For instance, Texas’ constitution mandates the legislature redraw its districts during the legislative session — which ends in March.

Lloyd Potter, the state’s demographer, said the governor could call a special legislative session over the summer, or the state could fall back on a redistricting commission made up of statewide elected officials.

The Census Bureau revealed Wednesday that the detailed results lawmakers need to reconfigure congressional and state legislative districts won’t be available until at least two months after the end of the regular 2021 legislative session.

The U.S. Census Bureau has again pushed back the release of the 2020 census results — a delay that will almost certainly force Texas lawmakers into legislative overtime this summer to redraw the state’s political maps.

The specter of a special session has hung over a series of hearings in the Senate this week during which state demographer Lloyd Potter told members of the chamber’s redistricting committee that it was likely the census results won't come until the House and Senate are out of session.

“My guess is you all will be back in a special session sometime this summer or early fall,” Potter said.

The Senate Redistricting Committee convened to discuss redistricting issues for North Texas on Wednesday morning. Dr. Potter, Texas’ Demographer, testified again today to discuss the timeliness of Census data, population projections, as well as issues specific to North Texas.

The Census Bureau issued a statement today saying that they would not be able to send out state level data for reapportionment until April 30th. With Texas projected to gain three congressional seats, the availability and quality of Census data is critical for the next 10 years.

Texas State Demographer Lloyd B. Potter says he expects there to be a census undercount in South Texas.

Speaking at a virtual Senate redistricting committee hearing on Tuesday, Potter said he has concerns about how accurate the count was during Census 2020.

“Historically there has been an undercount in places in South Texas. In the 2010 census that was an area that certainly had indications of an undercount. There were some contested count resolutions, concerns, there, and in other parts of the state as well,” Potter said,

“But, yes, the lower Rio Grande Valley and Laredo, there were some pretty strong indications there was an undercount in those areas.”

Texas’ booming population will likely lead to three new Congressional districts in the state.

During a virtual hearing Wednesday, Jan. 27, of the State Senate’s Special Committee on Redistricting, the state’s demographer, Lloyd Potter, said the 2020 Census results should expand the number of Congressional districts from 36 to 39.

The Texas Senate is holding its first hearing on redistricting in 2021—and there are already concerns being raised about the effects of possible undercounts.

Lawmakers and advocates are concerned that a potential undercount of people of color could make it even harder for minorities to get representation in office.

Dr. Lloyd B. Potter, a state demographer, testified Monday that estimates show that almost half of the areas with self-response rates lower than 50 percent are made up predominantly of Hispanics, which he says could skew census data - a key tool used for redistricting.

Hours after taking office, President Joe Biden handed Texas a huge gift that went mostly unnoticed, overshadowed by more controversial moves on climate, public health and the border wall. He reversed Donald Trump’s policy of excluding unauthorized immigrants from the Census count used to carve up the country into congressional districts

Lloyd Potter, Texas’ state demographer, took it a step further. Biden’s new policy isn’t just a gift for Texas. It’s a gift especially for Texas Republicans, since they control the Legislature and Governor’s mansion, and wield the knife that cuts the growing pie. “Whatever party’s in power maximizes the number of seats for the party,” Potter said. Under Trump’s proposal, “We definitely wouldn’t have gotten three. Maybe as few as one. It would certainly have diluted our representation.”

Senator Joan Huffman (R - Houston) announced on Thursday, January 21, 2021, that the Texas Senate Redistricting Committee will hold a series of regional hearings to solicit testimony from the public about the upcoming redistricting process. The hearings will begin on Monday, January 25. In a first for the Texas Senate, these regional hearings will allow members of the public to testify before the Committee via Zoom videoconference.

Dr. Lloyd Potter, Director of the Texas Demographic Center, will provide invited testimony about population projections for the State, for each region. 2020 Census data will not be available until later this year.

When the Census Bureau releases its decennial study of the American public this year, it is likely to show a population getting much older and much more diverse — and much less mobile.

Government statisticians are finalizing census counts that will be used to apportion both seats in the House of Representatives and billions of dollars in federal programs over the next 10 years. They will roll out formal census data, from state-level population estimates to block-by-block counts of residents, throughout 2021.

“The pandemic threw a loop-de-loop curve ball at the census effort. They’ve been planning this for over a decade and with thousands of temporary staff being on and off again, local get-out-the-count organizations running out of money and steam, and the deadline for ending data collection kept moving,” said Lloyd Potter, Texas’s state demographer and a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“Add to that the issue of the citizenship question being proposed, the effort to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the apportionment file, and the compressed time frame to conduct very complex post-enumeration processing and quality control efforts and you have the making of a demographer’s nightmare come true.”