What the census means for your democracy
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2021
⏱️ ? minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Give a helping hand this holiday season with the Washington Post helping hand. |
| 0:04.6 | This is John Kelly and I'm writing about Bread for the City, Friendship Place, and Miriam's Kitchen over the next few weeks. |
| 0:11.1 | Go to posthelpinghand.com to learn more and donate today. |
| 0:19.0 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post. |
| 0:22.8 | Hello, how are you? |
| 0:23.6 | Here's the Louisa back from the Washington Post. |
| 0:25.7 | Hi, this is Beth Ryan, part of the Washington Post. |
| 0:27.6 | Lori Artoni over at the post. |
| 0:29.6 | I'm Mrs. Post reports. |
| 0:31.6 | I'm Martin Powers. |
| 0:35.6 | It's Tuesday, April 27th. |
| 0:39.6 | Today, what the first census results mean for the future of Congress and the real origins of the word canceled. |
| 0:47.6 | So what was released on Monday was the long awaited state population totals that come out from the disanial census, which is a survey that they take every 10 years, counting every household and every person and every household in the United States. |
| 1:07.6 | Tara Barn pour covers demographics for the post and those numbers are used for two purposes to reapportion house seats. |
| 1:19.6 | There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives and they get reshuffled every 10 years based on how many people live in each state and also to dull out electoral college votes. |
| 1:31.6 | And before we dive into which state gained and lost seats because of this new census data, I'm curious if there were just some large takeaways of what this data is saying about what our country is looking like right now and how our population is changing. |
| 1:46.6 | Well, the biggest takeaway from Monday's numbers is showing that the United States is growing more slowly in the past 10 years than it ever has except for the decade of the 1930s great depression. |
| 1:59.6 | And the difference between the depression is that that was just a blip and after the depression, there was a big boom. |
| 2:06.6 | But in the past few decades, the growth has been slowing and so the fact that we are slower now than we have been at any point since the 30s is part of a downward trend that's expected to continue. |
| 2:18.6 | So Tara, as you mentioned, this data is used to basically determine how many seats in the House each state is going to have and how many electoral votes each state is going to have. |
| 2:38.6 | So what are we seeing now in terms of the shifts of states that are going to gain or lose political power because of this updated information about the population. |
| 2:49.6 | So this time around Republicans gained a little bit more of a political advantage and Democrats lost some ground. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

