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Florida Will Likely Become A Majority-Minority State Over Next Decade, Per Census Data

A demonstrator hands out a sign about the 2020 census outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in 2019. The Census Bureau is projecting the first set of census numbers won't be ready until February, Trump administration attorneys told a federal judge on Monday.
Andrew Harrer
/
Bloomberg via Getty Images
A demonstrator hands out a sign about the 2020 census outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in 2019. The Census Bureau is projecting the first set of census numbers won't be ready until February, Trump administration attorneys told a federal judge on Monday.

Florida is likely to become a majority-minority state over the next decade, according to new data released by the U.S. Census.

The percentage of the state population identifying themselves as “white only” was 57.9% in 2010 and has dropped to 51.5%.

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In the new data, the South Florida region has seen some large percentage point drops in white population.

Over the last decade, Broward County saw more than a ten percentage point drop in that metric. During the last Census, 43.5% of Broward residents identified themselves as white. Per the numbers released this week, that number has dropped to 33.1%.

Palm Beach County saw an eight percentage point drop, to 52.3% identifying as white, down from 60.1%.

The number dropped just 2% in Miami-Dade County, which also saw a 3% drop in its Black population. Latinos made up for most of the difference, now accounting for 68.7% of the population, up from 65%.

Monroe County saw a five percentage point drop in its population alongside a slight rise in the percent of Latinos.

One of the more interesting new trends that the new Census numbers have revealed is many more people are identifying as more than one race.

The state of Florida as a whole, as well as Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Broward, and Monroe counties, all saw more than double the amount of people identifying themselves as being from more than one race — as compared to 2010.

Daniel Rivero is part of WLRN's new investigative reporting team. Before joining WLRN, he was an investigative reporter and producer on the television series "The Naked Truth," and a digital reporter for Fusion. He can be reached at drivero@wlrnnews.org
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