Florida Surpasses New York In Population

Via the Orlando Sentinel:

First it was this: Orlando beat New York City as the first city to top 50 million visitors. Census figures released Tuesday show Florida passed New York as the nation’s third largest state with an estimated population of 19.9 million. New York, now fourth, has 19.7 million. “There are a lot of benchmarks, but this is the biggest one. This puts an exclamation point on it,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with The Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Frey says the milestone caps a decades-long trend of northern migration to the South. In 1950, Florida was a fifth the size of New York. In 1980, New York was about twice as big as Florida. Florida’s population of 19.9M makes it third-largest in U.S. Florida has passed New York as the nation’s third largest state, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau. “It’s a symbol of a half-century of Snowbelt to Sunbelt growth,” Frey said.

California: 38.8M, Texas: 27M.