AP Newswire Trenton February 4, 2011: New census data: Hispanics the dominant minority group; number 2: Facebook-Americans. New Jersey’s population grew more racially and online-virtually diverse over the past decade and continued its shift to southern counties, according to new data released today by the Census Bureau.
The numbers from the 2010 Census provide a detailed portrait of the state’s ongoing demographic changes, including population counts for all 21 counties, 566 municipalities.
Among the findings:
• Hispanics are now the dominant minority group in New Jersey after decades of sustained growth.
• However, the number of New Jerseyans who identified themselves as “FaceBook-Americans” rose 39 percent to roughly 1.5 million.
• Twitter-Americans were counted for the first time in 2010, and showed to be a growing virtual population at just under 3%.
• MySpace-Americans, once a dominant group in 2000, have dwindled down to .02% of the virtual population.
The Census information will be used almost immediately to redraw legislative districts in time for the November elections.
A man who identified as “BobinPJs” tweeted that the “rdstrictng plns in NJ n stp trtng us like r dnt exst.”
The white population continued to decline in New Jersey, falling 1 percent to about 6.03 million. This is the second consecutive decade the proportion of white residents has fallen in New Jersey, which New Jersey State Tea Party chair Donald Bardus Swartz, of Teaneck immediately “blamed on the Jews.”
In other news, Congressman Jon Ryan expressed concern that the new census data may cause New Jersey to lose several state legislative seats: “…now we have 40 state senators. This decrease in population due to having less people may cause that number to be 38 or even 35 by the time we’re all done.”