Washington ( CNN ) -- The announcement by the U.S. Census Bureau that the population stood at 308,745,538 on April 1 is a number for which many people have been waiting . Nevada , Arizona , Utah and Idaho had the fastest growth this decade while slow growth was seen in Rhode Island , Louisiana , Ohio and New York . Michigan was the only state to see a decline . Most people poring over the 2010 state counts are doing so with an eye to future elections , but it makes sense to proceed cautiously before drawing any hard conclusions about what that data mean in the political context . Attention is focused on 12 seats in the House of Representatives that will be leaving slow-growth states in the Northeast and Midwest and moving to the South and Southwest as populations there continued to grow quickly . Census 2010 : America grew at slowest rate since the Depression . Texas is the big winner , with four new House seats . Since the states losing seats are usually regarded as blue , tending to elect Democrats , and those gaining seats are normally considered red , tending to elect Republicans , it would be easy to assume Tuesday 's census release is good news for that party and alarming news for Democrats . It 's not that simple . If we regard simple population change as an indicator of political power , the buildup in red states is indeed significant . However , early next year , the Census Bureau will release counts of the population by race and ethnicity . That number will show shifts of the population that official estimates have pointed to all along : The diversifying of the population is more extensive in areas of fast population growth . Many of the states that have gained in their head count have gained non-white minorities , especially Hispanics . Estimates already show that four states that gained seats -- Texas , Florida , Arizona and Georgia -- are highly ranked in the Top 10 states for growth in the Hispanic population during this decade . Moreover , more than half the population growth in those states alone came from increases in the Latino population . These additions were a result of net immigration and births in those states . While the large increase in Hispanics in these high-growth states includes some immigrant newcomers ineligible to vote , eligible Latinos tend to vote Democratic in most of the states that gained seats . That may change by 2012 , but much will happen between now and then . Putting this into further perspective , the U.S. population grew by 9.7 % between 2000 and 2010 , slower than any decade since the Great Depression in the 1930s . With the Great Recession taking hold at the end of the 2000s , slowing immigration and birth rates , it is possible that slower growth will continue , at least for the short term . Thus , the sizeable increase in minority populations comes at a time when the overall population is growing more slowly . Thus the sweeping demographic changes going on in our nation are much more significant than just shifts in where people live . We are becoming more diverse , and , as many analysts have noted , we will be a white-minority nation in about 30 years . So simply looking at geography may not yield correct results when we 're talking about how new populations may behave and particularly how they may vote . The excitement that demographers feel about this once-a-decade population snapshot is likely overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of political analysts , who are busy discovering what state-level population shifts mean for state reapportionment and redistricting within states . But as we can see by looking more carefully at the data , there is more to population shifts than a simple rearranging of the map based on total counts . We 're in for a much more interesting and challenging time than many people may believe . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Audrey Singer .
Census puts U.S. population at 308.7 million , with red states generally posting fastest growth . Singer : Some analysts say census results will strengthen the GOP . She says minorities account for much of the growth and historically have favored Democrats . Singer : In most of the states that gained seats , eligible Latinos tend to vote Democratic .