Maricopa County Losing Influence*

* Maricopa County is still Arizona's "big dog" and is still growing, but AZ's other "dogs" grew more from 2000 to 2010.  Given that the overall "pie" of Arizona didn't get any bigger, that means that Maricopa is getting a slightly smaller part of that pie.

Over a month ago, the Census Bureau held a conference call where they talked about some of the 2010 census numbers that were already available to them.

The post about that call is here.

During the call, one point that piqued my interest was that the vast majority of the state "actual" totals were close to what had been estimated by statisticians.  34 of the 50 states were within +/- 1%, and 46 of 50 were within +/- 2% of 2010 estimates.

Only one state was more than 2% below estimate.

That state?

Arizona.  Of course.

Graph courtesy the U.S. Census Bureau.












The local level data released Thursday by the Census Bureau shines some light on that phenomenon.

While the state's actual count total came in more than 203K below the estimate, the variance wasn't evenly spread out across the state (based on 2009 estimates because I couldn't find the 2010 estimates, and this is only a rough analysis.  The Census Bureau is sure to put out a far more detailed analysis in the coming months).

The state's total drop from 2009 estimate was >203K; more than 206K of that total, or more than the statewide total difference, was in Maricopa County alone.

With the actual numbers, Maricopa County contains 59.7% of the state's population; the 2009 estimates (and the Census Bureau's statisticians are pretty good at estimating) showed Maricopa County with 62% of the state's population.  Not only that, Maricopa County didn't even hold the percentage that it had after the 2000 census, dropping to 59.7% from 59.9%. 

.2% doesn't sound like a big deal, until we remember that Maricopa County is the population, political and economic hub of Arizona.  A small loss here translates to large gains elsewhere.  In this case, the biggest beneficiary is Pinal County, which grew by more than 109% between 2000 and 2010, and saw its share of the state's population grow by more than 2.37%.

Some of the raw data ("difference" is the difference between the 2010 actual number and the 2009 estimate) -


Geographic Area       pop 2000     pop 2010     pop est 2009  difference

Arizona                     5,130,632      6,392,017      6,595,778           - 203,761


Maricopa County    3,072,149      3,817,117      4,023,132          - 206,015


Pima County               843,746          980,263      1,020,200          - 39,937

Pinal County               179,727         375,770         340,962             34,808

Yavapai County         167,517         211,033         215.686             - 4,653

Mohave County        155,032         200,186         194,825                5,361

Yuma County             160,026         195,751         196,972              - 1,221

Coconino County      116,320         134,421         129,849                4,572

Cochise County         117,755          131,346        129,518                1,828

Navajo County            97,470          107,449         112,975             - 5,526

Apache County          69,423            71,518           70,591                   927

Gila County                 51,335            53,597            52,199               1,398

Santa Cruz County    38,381            47,420             43,771              3,649

Graham County         33,489            37,220             37,045                 175

La Paz County           19,715            20,489            20,012                  477

Greenlee County         8,547             8,437               8,041                 396

Numbers on some of the cities and towns tomorrow...