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By Dawn Burleigh

With a growth in population, of almost 16-percent, Texas will gain two seats in U.S. House of Representatives according to the 2020 Census data released on Thursday,

Texas also gained two seats in the 2010 and four seats in the 2010 census data. Texas has gained an average of two seats each census since 1910.

The state’s Hispanic population is now nearly as large as the non-Hispanic white population, with Texas gaining nearly 11 Hispanic residents for every additional white resident since 2010. Those trends set up a pitched battle for political control when state lawmakers redraw legislative districts, according to the Texas Tribune.

Texas is the sixth in Highest Diversity Index at 67-percent according to Census Data.

Orange County’s population diversity has changed little in the last 10 years according to the numbers. Blacks or African Americans grew just under one percent while whites decreased by more than two percent.

Population in Orange County grew by 3.6-percent since 2010. There are now 84,808 persons living in the county, an increase of 2,971 compared to 81,837 in 2010.

Texas had the largest numeric growth in housing units with 1,611,888.

The 2020 Census showed that on April 1, 2020, there were 140,498,736 housing units in the United States, up 6.7-percent from the 2010 Census.

“While the national number of housing units grew over the past decade, this was not uniform throughout the country,” said Evan Brassell, chief of the Housing Statistics Branch in the Census Bureau’s Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division. “Counties that composed some part of a metropolitan or micropolitan area saw increases of 3.8-percent, on average, while counties outside of these areas showed decreases of 3.9-percent on average.”

Nationwide, there were 126,817,580 occupied housing units and 13,681,156 vacant units.