Ballotpedia provides comprehensive coverage of all elections within the 100 largest cities in the United State based on population. Following the 2020 census, two cities—Spokane, Washington, and Santa Clarita, California—entered the top 100 and another two cities—San Bernardino, California, and Birmingham, Alabama—did not make the cut. As a result, Ballotpedia has added coverage of Spokane and Santa Clarita, although we plan to continue our existing coverage of San Bernardino and Birmingham as well.
Within the top 100 cities, Irvine in California saw the largest change in rank, jumping 19 spots up from the 84th-largest city based on population in 2013 to the 65th-largest in 2020. Irvine experienced the 11th-largest increase in population between 2015 and 2020 of any city in the top 100.
Between 2015 and 2020, 80 of the cities saw their population increase. The city with the largest increase was New York, which added 377,447 people since 2015 to reach its 2020 population of 8,804,190. New York maintained its rank as the largest city in the United States by population.
Detroit had the largest decrease, losing 50,963 people from 2015 to 2020. Detroit went from the 19th-largest city in the country to the 26th-largest city with a total population of 639,111 in 2020 according to the census.
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