Analyzing Hawai’i’s Adjusted Redistricting Data

Overview

Hawai’i uses adjusted (or modified) data for state legislative and state congressional redistricting.

• 1,455,271 total population in the original PL file
• 1,383,606 total population in the adjusted PL file
• -71,665 total population difference between the two

Even in states where where the total population is unchanged, the distribution of population within the state can be affected.

To give you a sense for how these population shifts affect Hawai’i’s redistricting, the average district sizes in Hawai’i are:

• 27,129 people per state House district
• 55,344 people per state Senate district

The dataset used to create this report is the official redistricting dataset.

County Level Analysis

See the appendix for a detailed breakdown of county level population changes.

Block Level Analysis

In general, the changes in block population are not uniform: most blocks are unaffected by adjustment, while a handful of blocks lose a large amount of population that goes to a larger number of blocks in smaller quantities.

• 14,732 census blocks in Hawai’i
• 11,865 census blocks have the same population following adjustment
• 0 census blocks gained population following adjustment
• 2,867 census blocks lost population following adjustment (Of the 26 census blocks that lost population following reallocation, 24 contained facilities according to our analysis conducted with PPI data.)
• 0 census block(s) with negative population following adjustment

Official Language

The official language for Hawai’i’s adjustment is:

The commission shall allocate the total number of members of each house of the state legislature being reapportioned among the four basic island units, namely: (1) the island of Hawaii, (2) the islands of Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Kahoolawe, (3) the island of Oahu and all other islands not specifically enumerated, and (4) the islands of Kauai and Niihau, using the total number of permanent residents in each of the basic island units and computed by the method known as the method of equal proportions; except that no basic island unit shall receive less than one member in each house. [Add Const Con 1978 and election Nov 7, 1978; am HB 2327 (1992) and election Nov 3, 1992]