Thursday, 4:30 PM
Population loss could cost congressional seat
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff
Mounting population losses are all but certain to cost Massachusetts one of its 10 congressional seats after the 2010 Census, two new studies project.
Secretary of State William F. Galvin has already begun a campaign to keep all the US House seats, focusing on making sure all students and immigrants are counted to boost Massachusetts’ sagging population.
The new demographic studies indicate that Galvin, who helped head off a similar fate after the 2000 Census, is fighting an uphill battle.
"Unless a tidal wave wipes out Providence and all those people move to Massachusetts, it’s going to happen," said Clark Bensen, a consultant at PoliData, a Virginia-based political analysis firm that projected in a new study that Massachusetts will lose one seat.
"It’s only a question of where is the seat going to come from and who’s going to have to give it up," Bensen said Thursday.
If the state loses a seat after the 2010 Census, the state Legislature would have to divide the Commonwealth into nine congressional districts rather than the current 10. That could set up a clash between two members of the state’s all-Democratic House delegation.
But Galvin, who oversees the state’s voter registration rolls and is its federal census liaison, said Thursday that he hopes such a day never comes.
