Apparently, the city level information is really lagging because the Census kept tracking down folks well into the Fall. It’s usually not backward like this.
I suspect that there’s a separate methodology for the year estimates, and that someone, somewhere, sometime decided to do the July 1st method even in Census years.
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The Constitution requires every person be counted every ten years so I guess the manual process is required.
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N&O story here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article251183669.html
Also shares a bit of info on county populations statewide—Brunswick (4.2%) and Currituck (4.1%) were the fastest growing counties, while 31 counties lost population. Wake and Mecklenburg combine for more than 20% of the state’s population.
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As I see comments about Nashville in various posts, it is one of my pet peeves that certain cities just absorbed the county around them as their new city limits. The ones I think of is Nashville-Davidson County, Jacksonville- Duval County, Virginia Beach- Princess Anne County. Not sure about Phoenix- Maricopa County. If Raleigh was able to stretch to the county lines, we would be headed towards 1.2M, as would Charlotte. If the boroughs of NYC were County units, it would contain 5 counties. Yet media and sports teams take these population numbers as consistent and absolute. TV market size is a better estimate of a city’s sphere of influence. There I said it.
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All 5 boroughs/counties of nyc combined is a third of the area of Wake County. I missed your point on that.
I don’t think anyone cares too much about city populations anymore, especially for sports teams. it’s all on a metro basis. The playing fields aren’t even as you pointed out in your post. But the City of Raleigh has benefited greatly from the land grabs that can only be done in certain regions of the US.
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Of these, the most comparable is Jacksonville. It is in a large county and its near total consolidation, and it’s not even a million people, but look at the visibility that consolidation brought to it.
As for VA Beach, it was larger than Raleigh until sometime in the last decade. Even with its huge land area, Raleigh is now more populated.
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Yep that why it can be hard to get our sports team because Raleigh 24 The Other NC City is 22. Only separating us St. Louis which is shrinking.
All 5 boroughs are coterminous with the counties in NYC – it can get confusing, but essentially the borough are also counties (although some go by different county names – Brooklyn is Kings County, Manhattan is New York County, and Staten Island is Richmond County).
TV market size is interesting bc the TV market for the Triangle is actually larger than the CSA bc it includes Fayetteville and southern VA. Same for Charlotte – their market size I believe would include Asheville.
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Because Raleigh doesn’t have a huge land area and subsequent population, and because the Triangle is statistically split into two pieces, and because the Triangle doesn’t have a long brand history/story, it’s imperative that the Triangle reunites into a single MSA in 2023. Once that occurs, the visibility and market viability will be enhanced for all sorts of future endeavors.
Sadly, many people today don’t even realize that the Triangle was a single MSA until the early 2000s. Interestingly enough, the current Raleigh MSA is now larger than the combined MSA was back in 2000. Unfortunately, and despite the rapid growth of the Triangle this century, it’s like the Triangle’s visibility has been diminished for the better part of the last two decades.
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Asheville TV market is grouped with Greenville and Spartanburg SC. I can’t remember which, but local stations for CBS, ABC & NBC are split in those 3 cities. I used to see political TV adds all the time from western NC while I was in Greenville.
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So we better fight like hell for the Durham metro to recombined with Raleigh!!!
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Yes, Asheville is in the Greenville tv market. Boone is the mountain town in Charlotte’s tv market.
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is it up to the cities to decide if Raleigh MSA is “reunited” with Durham MSA, or is that up a government agency? Just wondering if this desire is something anyone can actually control or influence. I agree that it’d be beneficial for it all to be one area; who decided to split it in the early 2000’s and why? Seems like whatever reason for the split must be addressed if it’s gonna be recombined.
It’s up to the OMB (the Census folks), and it’s based on commuting data.
There’s been recent chatter that the data is suggesting that a reunification is likely for the next cycle in 2023.
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I really don’t get how they looked at commuting data and said “yup that’s two different metros” when the airport and RTP as a whole is in both “metros”.
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You are not alone being baffled by how anyone can reasonably perceive the Triangle as two metros. While RDU is fully within Wake, RTP spans both MSAs, as do Cary, Morrisville, Raleigh and Durham to at least a minimal amount.
I do seem to remember that Durham officials cheered being designated being their own MSA when it happened, and the narrative that I seem to remember was one that would highlight Durham and prove that “all good things in the Triangle” actually came out of Durham, not Raleigh. Since the split, It has arguably not been good for either Durham or Raleigh, though the split has certainly highlighted how the Raleigh side of the Triangle carries the lion’s share of the overall growth.
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Probably an inside job. You know, someone in the OMB who lives in CLT. 
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Thanks! I knew it was one of the two…
It was due to there not being a high enough percentage of commuters from Durham County to Wake County. The percentage was fine the other way around. You have to remember that though both counties share RTP, the Durham portion was developed first and had a much higher percentage of the RTP employees at the time of the split. The Durham side is also larger in land area. Durham residents didn’t have a reason to go into Wake County. Since the split, the Wake side has gotten much more developed.
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The trouble with that being the theory is that the Triangle was one MSA while the Wake side of RTP remained undeveloped for many years.
I think that it has more to do with the fact that Wake exploded with growth and that changed the dynamics of the data.