Now, state officials are starting to get access to much of the information collected by the census, and put it to use.

Among those taking a long look at the data are the members of Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission, whose job it is to take the new numbers provided by the census and create new political boundaries for both the Arizona Legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Should everything go as planned, the new boundaries the commission creates will be used for the next election cycle in 2022. 

But drawing those maps is no simple task, said Northern Arizona University political science professor Fred Solop, and one that has real consequences that will be felt for the next decade.

Depending how districts are drawn, various communities and interests may see their voices at the state and federal level amplified, or diminished, Solop said.

And Flagstaff is a good example of that. For the state legislator districts, the city has been lumped into districts with much of the Navajo Nation.

That changed with the last round of redistricting a decade ago, and the city was then included in a district that also contained significant areas of Coconino, Yavapai, Navajo and Gila counties.

But Flagstaff voters have had trouble getting their interests and favored candidates to the state legislature, with the city’s mostly Democratic vote largely overwhelmed by the more Republican areas that make up the rest of the district.

“Flagstaff has voted one way and the rest of the legislative district has voted another way in every state election since the new maps were formed. So Flagstaff hasn't been able to elect the people they want to see in state legislature,” Solop said. “The grouping can either amplify their interests, amplify their voice, or diminish their voice. So the stakes are high when it comes to state politics and federal politics.”

And beyond party politics, Solop said that kind of representation can matter a lot in terms of the issues that are seen as priorities at the federal and state level, as well as where and how money may be distributed to localities.

That’s one thing that makes drawing up the new maps challenging.

But it’s by no means the only factor the commission must consider, Solop said. The commission has to balance several, often conflicting, criteria as they are creating the new maps.

In addition to making sure the maps they create are constitutional, and have roughly equal population, the commission attempts to draw districts that are competitive while also preserving communities of interest.

The districts are also supposed to respect some geographical features, and look fairly clean and simple, not sprawling too much or using strange shapes to carve out specific communities.

Traditionally, Solop said, the commission has designed districts in a way that there are several safe Republican seats, several safe Democratic seats and several more competitive seats.

Working with quality data

Some have worried about the quality of the information the commission is working with, as generated through last year’s census.

Even as the census was ongoing, locals and experts alike worried about the possibility of an undercount, especially in harder-to-reach minority communities.

Those worries were bolstered earlier this year when it was announced that, according to the census, Arizona’s population had not grown as much as had been expected and the state would not be receiving another seat in Congress.

“I think everybody was surprised, frankly, by that finding, and there's a lot of concern that there was an undercount in this census,” Solop said. “That whether it was Latinos deterred from participating in the census because of the calls for a citizenship question by the Trump administration, or just concerns that this census was being administered during the pandemic, during the time of COVID.”

Evidence of an undercount was highlighted by the Associated Press just this week.

The majority Hispanic city of Somerton in southern Arizona was shown by the census to have shrunk in population, the AP reported. That’s despite what residents told reporters was obvious growth in the community, so much so that new neighborhoods and schools have been constructed to accommodate the increase in population over the last decade.

Despite that, the census reported that the town’s population had fallen by 90 residents, according to the AP.

But without needing to add another congressional seat, could the maps for districts for the U.S. House of Representatives end up staying largely the same? Solop said that might be the obvious assumption, but it’s hard to guess what the new maps will end up looking like.

The commission is supposed to start drawing maps with a blank slate without basing things off the current districts. On top of that, this year the commission could also be using a different method to determine how competitive districts are.

In the past, Solop said, the commission has looked at voter registration information, but this time around, they are looking at the voting patterns themselves. And those two sets of info often tell different stories, especially in terms of how independents vote.

While based on their name, one might assume that many independent voters vary in allegiance between the two main parties, research and voting records have shown that most independents mostly stick with just one party or the other.

They are also less likely to cast a ballot, Solop said.

In that way, looking at actual voter data rather than voter registration could change how districts are drawn quite a bit, he said, for both legislative and congressional maps.

What is clear? By coming just under the population level for an additional seat in the U.S. Congress, especially if there was an undercount, Arizona as a whole may have less political representation than it might warrant for the next decade, Solop said.