The U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Redistricting Data Summary Files on Aug. 12. Soon afterward, TAC’s County Information Program posted selected data for each county online for those who wish to create maps or who do not need to download the full dataset. The link will open a web page showing selected data from the 2020 Census alongside the same data from the 2010 Census, the difference between the two and the percentage change from 2010 to 2020 for each of the selected demographic categories. The link defaults to Anderson County — use the dropdown box to change to a different county.
There is also a permanent link to these pages from our county profiles pages. Go to the Texas County Profiles website, click the link to your county and then click the Census 2020 Redistricting Data link.
For more information on demographic changes in the state and on the ins and outs of redistricting, be sure to attend the Redistricting breakout session at the TAC Legislative Conference on Sept. 2.
If needed for mapping, the full set of redistricting data is available online from the Census Bureau but be sure to also download the technical documentation. Note that not only are these datasets very large (the data for Texas has over 900,000 rows in each of the three main data tables), but they are also in what the bureau is calling a legacy format. Basically, these are text files that can be pulled into a database from which you can then extract the data for your county and either analyze the tabular data or connect the data to the appropriate geographical boundaries using geographical information software such as ArcMap, Google Earth or MapInfo. For the boundaries, you’ll need to download the appropriate TIGER/Shapefile.
For more information about this article, please contact Tim Brown.