Census factoids II: Top 25 boroughs in Alaska

By
Suzanne Downing
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3

Anchorage, the Mat-Su Borough, and Fairbanks North Star Borough are at the top of the population chart for Alaska, and Kenai is moving up the list.

Anchorage has inched downward population-wise in the 20 years since the 2000 Census, when there were 291,826 residents, while in that same Census, Fairbanks North Star Borough had 82,840 people, and the Mat-Su Borough had 59,322, which is about what the Kenai Peninsula Borough has in 2020.

Here’s the list from the U.S. Census:

Changes in the neighborhood

Ketchikan: 13,948, an increase of 3.5 percent

Sitka: 8,458, a decrease of 4.8 percent

Lake and Peninsula Borough: 1,476, a decrease of 9.5 percent

Northwest Arctic Borough: 7,793, an increase of 3.6 percent

Kusilvak: 8,368, an increase of 12.2 percent

Bethel: 18,666, an increase of 9.7 percent

Dillingham: 4,857, an increase of 9.2 percent

Kodiak: 13,101, a decrease of 3.6 percent

Haines: 2,080, a decrease of 17 percent

Denali Borough: 1,619, a decrease of 11.3 percent

Yakutat: 662

Hoonah-Angoon: 2,365

Prince of Wales: 5,753

Petersburg: 3,398

Read: Mat-Su Borough grew by 20 percent in decade

3 COMMENTS

  1. Perhaps it’s inching downward because a great deal more people don’t trust the government and told the census takers to take a hike instead of a census.

  2. I have to ask. If Anchorage is about a third of the population, how do they have so many seats in government? I haven’t sat down to calculate the percise representation. At first glance, it seems off.

    • At reapportionment, each House district has approximately the same population. The relatively small size of the HOR, 40 members, makes it very difficult to design districts and some are larger than most states and are often oddly shaped to avoid Voting Rights Act conflicts.

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