Overall, these population shifts reveal no clear advantage for Republicans or Democrats. Sun Belt states have been fertile for Republicans, but demographic analysts suggest recent migration has been heavily Hispanic, which could benefit Democrats. And while much of the growth continues to be suburban, Republicans no longer hold the solid edge in suburban communities they once did. Democrats hope to claim as many as four new seats in Georgia, Arizona, Texas and California, said Frost, the Texas Democrat. Yet, they also concede those could be offset by losses in Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois.
Republicans feel they have a good shot at new seats in Arizona, Florida and Nevada.
A new district in the swelling suburbs north of Dallas could be their best chance, GOP analysts say, and they hope to draw a map that could take two or three more seats through balloting in 2002. Either way, Republicans say a decade of state-level political successes has put them in better stead for the remapping process than in 1990. Republicans also received an early boost in the remapping process last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with them on a highly charged issue of how minorities should be counted in the census. Democrats had pushed to adjust the state population totals statistically to reflect millions of people that go uncounted, most of them minorities who tend to vote Democratic. Party leaders said Thursday it was too soon to know whether seats might have been divided differently using adjusted numbers.