No Runny Eggs

(H/T – Say Anything via Emperor Misha I)

Paul K. Ogden of Odgen On Politics does the math on voter registrations in Marion County, Indiana (that would be the county that includes Indianapolis), and discovered there are 5% more voters registered than there were those 18 years or older in 2007. Specifically, Paul states there were 644,197 adults and 677,401 registered voters. The former number is likely slightly high (because Paul added up the number of juveniles in 2006 and subtracted that from the 876,804 people estimated to be in the county in 2007), while the latter comes to us from the Indianapolis Star.

One could try to make the argument that Marion County’s population did increase by 5%, but the recent census numbers don’t bear that out. While the Census Bureau does not offer the breakdown by age as STATSIndiana does, they do offer a chart estimating the population every year since 2000. I’ll reprint that here:

April 1, 2000 (Census official number) – 860,454
July 1, 2000 (beginning of the estimates) – 860,958
July 1, 2001 – 865,068 (+0.4% from 7/1/2000)
July 1, 2002 – 864,900 (drop of less than 0.1% from 7/1/2001)
July 1, 2003 – 865,820 (+0.1% from 7/1/2002)
July 1, 2004 – 866,917 (+0.1% from 7/1/2003)
July 1, 2005 – 868,735 (+0.2% from 7/1/2004)
July 1, 2006 – 872,986 (+0.5% from 7/1/2005)
July 1, 2007 – 876,804 (+0.4% from 7/1/2006)

In short, the population of Marion County increased by only 1.9% between July 1, 2000 and July 1, 2007, with a highest year-to-year change of 0.5%. To put it in annual terms, that’s less than 0.3% per year. Yet we’re supposed to believe that the adult population in Marion County increased by something north of 5% between July 1, 2007 and a couple days ago? Sorry, but I’m not buying that.