State Senator Erica Smith-Ingram wields more vote clout per constituent than any of the other 49 members in the North Carolina Senate, according to recent data from the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Smith-Ingram represents Senate District 3, spanning eight northeastern counties including Tyrrell.

The reason for the disparity is that the population in District 3 has shrunk by 24,300 from the 2010 district ideal of 198,897 while more urban districts are gaining inhabitants.

At the other end of the shift is Senate District 17, all of which is in southwestern Wake County. Its population has grown by 22,900 over the ideal.

Tyrrell County, the Tar Heel State’s least populous county, had 4,407 inhabitants in 2010, when the most recent federal census was taken. Since then, every demographic source consulted has projected population decline in Tyrrell by 2020.

The state demographer estimated the county’s population in 2014 at 4,135, a loss of 269 persons from the 2010 census. If that trend continues, Tyrrell’s 2020 population will be 3,774.

Carolina Population Center projects Tyrrell’s 2020 population at 3,947, a loss of 460 since 2010. Calculating a steady yearly decline would put Tyrrell’s 2015 estimate at 4,177.

Carolina Population Center also projects Tyrrell’s 2030 population still falling, to 3,686.

Tyrrell County’s boundaries were last changed in 1890, when Kilkenny was gained from Hyde. But the census figures that year for the entire nation were destroyed in a government warehouse fire in Washington, D.C. The lowest census figure for Tyrrell County since 1900 was 3,806 in 1970, when it bottomed out of a decline from the county’s peak of 5,556 in 1940, just prior to World War II.