2012 State Legislative Block Equivalency Files

Written by:

The Redistricting and Voting Rights Data Office (contact rdo@census.gov or 301-763-4039)

Download the 2012 State Legislative District Block Equivalency Files

These Block Equivalency Files (BEFs) are the whole 2010 Census tabulation block representations of the 2012 State Legislative District plans as submitted by the states to the U.S. Census Bureau. The .ZIP file contains a national block equivalency file and individual state files for all states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The fields in these files should be imported as text to preserve leading zeros.

In instances where plans included split 2010 Census tabulation blocks, the Census Bureau requested that the state assign the whole block to one district for the purpose of tabulating data. These block equivalency files contain the whole block tabulation plan.

Ohio split blocks in both their 2012 State Legislative District- Upper Chamber (SLDU) and State Legislative District- Lower Chamber (SLDL) plans. Delaware and the District of Columbia split blocks in their SLDU plans. Connecticut and Vermont split blocks in their SLDL plan.

Notes

A unique 3-character census code, identified by state participants, is assigned to each state’s legislative district upper chamber (SLDU) and lower chamber (SLDL) within a state. In Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and Puerto Rico, the state participant did not assign the current state legislative districts to cover all of the state or equivalent area. The code “ZZZ” has been assigned to areas with no state legislative districts defined (usually large water bodies). These unassigned areas are treated within the state as a single state legislative district for purposes of data presentation.

Nebraska has a unicameral legislature and the District of Columbia has a single council, both of which the Census Bureau treats as upper-chamber legislative areas (SLDUs) for the purpose of data presentation. Therefore, there are no data by the lower house of the state legislative districts (SLDLs) for either Nebraska or the District of Columbia.

The state of New Hampshire uses floterial districts in their lower-chamber (SLDL) plan. Floterial districts are overlay districts made up of two or more discrete districts. These discrete or component districts are those represented in the New Hampshire SLDL TIGER/Line shapefile. A listing of the floterial districts and their component districts is available as a PDF and as a comma delimited text file.