Photograph by Julie Denesha/Getty Images

Eileen Woofford, 84, waited in line to cast her vote at Cleveland Avenue Baptist Church on November 6, 2012 in Kansas City, Missouri.

That’s the share of black voters eligible to vote in the 2012 presidential election who cast a ballot.

Blacks outvoted non-Hispanic whites, who had a 64.1 percent turnout rate, according to a Census Bureau report released yesterday. It’s the first time blacks voted at a higher rate than whites since before 1996, when the bureau began publishing statistics on the eligible voters.

Blacks outvoted whites amid the re-election of President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black chief executive.

The share of all eligible citizens who voted fell to 61.8 percent in 2012 from 63.6 percent in 2008, Census data show.

Bloomberg’s John McCormick has more here.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 66.2% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg

The rear exterior and pool of a newly constructed mansion in New Jersey.

The Census Bureau has begun to release demographic and economic data for redrawn congressional districts that became effective this year, yielding valuable insight about the constituencies of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Following are the 10 districts with the highest median household income in 2011, according to Census Bureau estimates compiled by Bloomberg’s Frank Bass. The list is dominated by districts near Washington, D.C., New York City and San Jose, all areas with high costs of living.

While these districts are prime territories for political candidates to raise money, it’s less clear how income relates to voting. While Republicans generally do better and Democrats worse as voter income levels rise, there are plenty of areas that are wealthy, Democratic and socially liberal, including parts of Manhattan and some districts on this list, namely Virginia’s 8th.

The 51 districts with a median household income above $70,000 break down are represented by 29 Democrats and 22 Republicans. Democrats hold six of the 10 highest-income districts and 16 of the top 25.

1. Virginia’s 10^th ($109,505): Republican Frank Wolf represents suburbs of Washington, including all of fast-growing Loudoun County and part of Fairfax County, including McLean. President Barack Obama lost the district by about one percentage point in the 2012 election.

2. Virginia’s 11^th ($100,146): Democrat Gerry Connolly’s district abuts Wolf’s, enveloping parts of Fairfax and Prince William Counties. Connolly’s district became more Democratic-leaning in redistricting as Wolf’s became more Republican-friendly. Obama won 62 percent in Connolly’s district.

3. California’s 18^th ($97,001): Democrat Anna Eshoo represents part of San Jose and all of Mountain View, including the corporate headquarters of Google Inc., and Palo Alto, where Stanford University is located. Obama won 68 percent.

4. New York’s 3^rd ($95,699): Democrat Steve Israel’s district includes sections of Suffolk and Nassau counties on Long Island, plus a part of Queens.

5. New Jersey’s 7^th ($95,189): Republican Leonard Lance’s district cuts across the north-central part of the state, taking in communities like Bridgewater and Summit.

6. New Jersey’s 11^th ($93,655): Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen’s constituency includes most of Morris County.

7. California’s 17^th ($92,030): Democrat Mike Honda represents Sunnyvale, part of San Jose and the corporate headquarters of Apple Inc. in Cupertino. Obama won 72 percent.

8. Virginia’s 8^th ($91,027): Democrat Jim Moran’s district includes close-in suburbs of Washington, including Arlington, Alexandria and part of Fairfax County. Obama won 68 percent.

9. Maryland’s 8^th ($90,959): Democrat Chris Van Hollen represents most of Montgomery County near Washington.

10. California’s 45^th ($89,383). Republican John Campbell holds a district in central and southern Orange County that includes Irvine and most of Mission Viejo. Republican Mitt Romney won 55 percent of the district vote in 2012.

Original post is Top-10 Congressional Districts: Household Income by Political Capital.

Photograph by Michael Okoniewski/Bloomberg

Graduates wearing mortarboards attend Syracuse University’s commencement ceremony.

That’s the number of Americans age 25 and older in 2012 whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree, according to the Census Bureau.

That’s about one-fifth of the civilian non-institutionalized population of 204.6 million, Census data show.

Women outnumbered men by 21.1 million to 19.4 million among people whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree. There were also more women than men with master’s degrees last year. There were more men than women holding doctoral and professional degrees.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 40.6 Million by Political Capital.

Photograph by Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

People in New York's Times Square prepare to watch U.S. President Barack Obama's acceptance speech.

President Barack Obama won more support from New York City in November’s election than any White House candidate in more than 100 years, according to a final tally of votes.

Obama beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 81 percent to 18 percent in the nation’s largest city, according to a certified vote count released Dec. 31 by the state board of elections. Some New York ballots were counted late in part because of complications caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Obama’s share of the vote is the best showing by a presidential nominee in New York since its five boroughs were consolidated in 1898, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the state elections board and the 2005 books “America at the Polls” and “The Encyclopedia of New York State.”

The results underscore New York’s decades-long status as a Democratic bastion where most residents are racial and ethnic minorities. Of the city’s 8.2 million residents, 29 percent are Hispanic, 23 percent are non-Hispanic black and 13 percent are non-Hispanic Asian, according to 2011 estimates from the Census  Bureau.

“Demographic shifts are permanently changing the political landscape,” said Bruce Berg, a political scientist at Fordham University in New York. Census data show New York “is a more minority city than it already was,” he said in a telephone interview.

Republican presidential candidates have taken less than one-fourth of the city vote in each of the past six elections.

Calvin Coolidge in 1924 was the last Republican presidential nominee to win New York.

Obama broke his own record of 79 percent support in New York in the 2008 election. His showing four years ago topped the 78 percent that Al Gore won in the city as the 2000 Democratic nominee.

See the  full report at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Obama’s Biggest-Apple Election by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Trucks sit outside a row of temporary housing units for oil workers in Tioga, North Dakota.

North Dakota, where an energy boom has produced the nation’s lowest unemployment rate, is adding people at a faster rate than any other state.

That’s according to an estimate released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, which said today that North Dakota increased its population by 2.17 percent in the year ended July 1, growing to 699,628 from 684,740. North Dakota’s unemployment rate was 3.1 percent in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The District of Columbia grew by 2.15 percent, followed by a string of Southern and Mountain West states where the population has surged for decades. Texas, the second-most populous state, grew by 1.67 percent and added 427,400 people during the year, more than any other state.

Texas was followed by Wyoming (1.6 percent), Utah (1.45 percent), Nevada (1.43 percent), Colorado (1.39 percent) and Arizona (1.33 percent).

Political Capital also watches the state population numbers because faster-growing states win more representation in Congress than slower-growing states when the 435 House seats are reapportioned every decade after the Census.

Florida will overtake New York as the third most-populous state sometime this decade. Florida had 19,317,568 residents to New York’s 19,570,261 on July 1, a difference of 252,693, according to the Census Bureau. New York had 419,354 more people than Florida a year earlier.

Georgia, with 9.9 million people as of July 1, supplanted Michigan as the eighth most-populous state, according to the Census Bureau estimate.

The U.S. population was about 313.9 million on July 1, up 0.75 percent and 2.3 million people from a year earlier.

Original post is North Dakota Fastest-Growing, Florida Closes in on New York by Political Capital.

The new districts placed many of those who remained in competitive races this fall.

Seven of New York’s House members — more than one-fourth of the delegation — are rated as endangered by political analyst Charles Cook, who rates congressional races. That’s more than in any other state.

“They’re all relatively new, they’re running in new districts and it’s a presidential election,” said former Republican Rep. James Walsh, who did not seek re-election in 2008 after 10 terms and now works for the lawyer-lobbying firm K&L Gates LLP.

New York sent six new Republicans to Washington in 2010, and four of them are on Cook’s vulnerable list: Ann Marie Buerkle, Chris Gibson, Nan Hayworth and Michael Grimm.

Three Democrats are rated as endangered as well: Kathy Hochul, who won a special election in 2011, Tim Bishop and Bill Owens.

The Democrats will be running on a ticket led by President Barack Obama, notes Albert Cover, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Also on the ticket: Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, whom Cook considers a shoo-in for re-election.

That means voters will have to split their tickets if the Republicans are to win another term. “It’s an uphill battle” for some Republicans, Cook said, “given the fact that is a presidential election year in New York.”

Original post is N.Y. Lost Two Seats, Gained Races by Political Capital.

Photograph by David Goldman/Getty Images

A polling site in Manhattan.

That’s how many Hispanics will be eligible to vote in the Nov. 6 presidential election, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis.

That’s an increase from 19.5 million eligible Hispanic voters in 2008, when 9.7 million voted in the election. President Barack Obama won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote, according to a national exit poll.

Hispanics account for more than 20 percent of the overall population in three swing states — Nevada (27 percent), Florida (23 percent) and Colorado (21 percent), according to 2011 Census Bureau estimates. Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney held their first of three debates yesterday in Denver, and the president will campaign in Colorado today.

While the Hispanic population has surged, the political influence of that ethnic group hasn’t realized its full potential partly because Hispanics generally have lower rates of voter registration and turnout than non-Hispanics.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 23.7 million by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Representative Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, greets delegates at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte.

Thirteen members of the U.S. House have been defeated for re-election in primaries before the Nov. 6 general election, the most in two decades.

It’s not a harbinger of an anti-incumbent vote in eight weeks, even as public approval of Congress hovers near an all-time low. Eight of the 13 lost to other House members after changes made in post-Census redistricting.

Those eight were Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, Donald Manzullo of Illinois, Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, Steve Rothman of New Jersey, Russ Carnahan of Missouri, Hansen Clarke of Michigan, Sandy Adams of Florida and Ben Quayle of Arizona.

The five House members who lost to outside challengers were Jean Schmidt of Ohio, Tim Holden of Pennsylvania, Silvestre Reyes of Texas, John Sullivan of Oklahoma and Cliff Stearns of Florida.

Nineteen House members were unseated in the primaries in 1992, when election defeats rose for reasons related to redistricting and a House bank scandal involving members who overdrew their congressional checking accounts.

The 13 who lost this year exceeds the total of 12 House members who were denied renomination in the previous four elections combined.

This year’s tally doesn’t include Louisiana, which features a first-round matchup on Nov. 6 between Republican Reps. Charles Boustany and Jeff Landry, who are sharing a ballot with three lesser-known candidates. Louisiana is the only state to hold its primary on the national Election Day; if no candidate wins a majority of the vote in the all-candidate, single-ballot race, a runoff election between the top two vote-getters follows in December.

In California, which held a June primary similar in format to Louisiana’s system, House Democrats are pitted against one another in two districts on Nov. 6. In Iowa and Ohio, a House Democrat will run against a House Republican after redistricting.

Indiana Republican Richard Lugar was the only senator denied renomination this election cycle. He lost to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

The primaries yesterday in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware were the last before Nov. 6.

Original post is Congressional Primaries End With Most House Defeats Since 1992 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Five year-old Jesse Quesada Jr. receives a dental x-ray during the Remote Area Medical (RAM) free clinic in Oakland, California.

It’s difficult to spin today’s news on health insurance coverage as anything but a win for Barack Obama and his candidacy to keep the White House.

Last year, the nation enjoyed its largest reduction in the uninsured population since 1999, the Census Bureau said. And credit seems to be due in part to a provision of Obama’s health-care overhaul, the Affordable Care Act, that allows adults younger than 26 to stay on their parent’s insurance plans. The Census said that 540,000 people between age 19 and 25 gained coverage in 2011, the first full year the law was in effect — more than in any other age group.

Overall, the number of uninsured people in the country fell to 48.6 million, down 1.3 million from 2010. The White House gave itself a modest pat on the back for the decline in a blog post.

“The bottom line is the earliest indications of the effect of the Affordable Care Act are exceedingly positive,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Families USA and one of the law’s biggest boosters. “It just is a clear indication that we should move forward with the remainder of the Affordable Care Act and hopefully we’ll experience similar improvements for all age groups.”

That won’t happen, of course, if Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, boots Obama from office in November. He’s pledged to repeal the health law. He says he’d replace it with his own policies, some of which might resemble the law. Romney said on Sept. 9, for example, that he supports letting young adults stay on their parents plans and that people with pre-existing medical conditions shouldn’t be denied coverage, another major tenet of the ACA.

Trouble is, Romney hasn’t explained his health policies in any detail. A Sept. 10 Bloomberg Government study examining Romney’s health policies said that “they are often unclear and can be interpreted in various ways.” Some “are only sentence fragments,” the study said.

Andrea Saul, a Romney campaign spokeswoman, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail asking for comment on today’s Census data.

Pollack, an Obama supporter, said the Census numbers would start to turn the other direction under a Romney administration.

“Governor Romney does not simply want to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “He wants to go backwards, in a way that undoubtedly would not just eliminate the gains that can be made and are being made through the Affordable Care Act.” By reducing funding for Medicaid, the state-run insurance program for the poor, Pollack argues, Romney would “substantially increase the number of people without health coverage.”

At least one Republican found a line of attack against Obama in the Census numbers. Chris Jacobs, a policy analyst for Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee, sent an e-mail to reporters and others noting that a lot of the gain in insurance was due to the growth of public programs like Medicaid, entitlements that Jacobs’ party has criticized for increasing Americans’ dependency on the government.

“If the Administration wants to claim that ObamaCare’s under-26 mandate helped reduce the number of uninsured, then it should similarly accept responsibility for the economic policies under which there are nearly 4 million more uninsured — and over 8 million more individuals on Medicaid — then when Barack Obama was elected,” he said.

Original post is Obama Policy Credited For Decline in Uninsured; What Would Romney Do? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images

Jayson Werth #28 is greeted by Michael Morse #38 of the Washington Nationals after he scored on sacrifice fly during a game against the New York Mets at Citi Field on Sept. 11, 2012.

It’s a great today to be a sports fan in Washington.

Not only do the Washington Nationals have the best record in baseball, the city also is still buzzing about the stellar weekend debut of Robert Griffin III as quarterback of the Washington Redskins, and the Washington Kastles featuring Venus Williams look set to repeat as champions of World Team Tennis.

Today, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will no doubt discuss RG3 as well as the new football season, player health and future of the game at a luncheon sponsored by Politico at Washington’s W Hotel. Meanwhile, golf legend Arnold Palmer will pick up another award, the Congressional Gold Medal, in a ceremony at the Capitol. Later, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts will lead fellow members of Congress and their staff against military veterans in a charity hockey game at the Washington Capitals training facility in Arlington, Va.

In the sport of politics, Rep. Paul Ryan looks to be covering home. He begins running ads today for re-election to his Wisconsin House seat, even as he makes a campaign stop in the state in his bid for the vice presidency. Ryan’s Democratic opponent in the 1st District is Rob Zerban, a former county official. Vice President Joe Biden also ran for re-election to the Senate in 2008 as he campaigned with President Barack Obama for the White House.

Also today, farmers’ groups will rally on the National Mall to urge passage of the farm bill, the Census Bureau will issue a report on poverty and health insurance coverage in the U.S., Boeing Co. CEO Jim McNerney will discuss the corporate role in formulating U.S. foreign policy and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will deliver remarks on the four-year anniversary of the collapse of financial industry at the Economic Club of Washington.

Original post is Washington Daybook: Kerry on Ice, Bloomberg on the Economy by Political Capital.