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Little old Maryland is changing. It's not the rapid-fire transformation we're used to seeing in Sun Belt states, but demographic shifts will mean big alterations in Maryland's future political landscape.

Results from the 2010 census confirm that Maryland is becoming a favorite domicile of non-white Americans. Indeed, all of the state's growth in the past 10 years flows from African Americans, Asians and Hispanics moving to the Free State.

Whites now are in the minority in four jurisdictions — Montgomery County, Charles County, Baltimore city and Prince George's County. Minorities make up 41 percent of Howard County's population and 37 percent of Baltimore County's.

On the Eastern Shore, despite its historic ties to segregation and slavery, minorities represent 48 percent of Somerset County's population, 34 percent of Dorchester County's and 33 percent of Wicomico County's.

Even Western Maryland is beginning to see an influx of non-white faces: The city of Frederick grew by 12,472 people, with more than 90 percent of that attributed to non-whites. The story was similar in Hagerstown, where its growth of nearly 3,000 new residents was dominated by African-Americans and Hispanics.

The biggest surprise: the dramatic surge of African-Americans moving to Waldorf. With a whopping 45,000 newcomers in the past decade — two-thirds of them black — Waldorf is now a minority-majority town, as well as the fifth-largest community in Maryland.

The addition of 242,000 more Hispanics, 209,000 more African-Americans and 107,000 more Asians will have an impact on the makeup of the Maryland General Assembly after the next election in 2014. By the 2020 census, the influence of these groups will be more pronounced. By then, Maryland probably will be a minority-majority state.

Whites constitute 55 percent of the state's population today, down 7 percent from 2000.

What this means in political terms isn't totally clear. That's because new minority residents are spread throughout much of the state. This dilutes their political power in many state legislative districts.

A good example is Baltimore city, where the largest groups of new arrivals were Hispanics (3,600) and Asians (2,100). Meanwhile, 22,000 whites and 23,000 blacks moved to the suburbs.

Hispanics now constitute 34 percent of the city's Highlandtown section, a community that previously served as a melting pot for Eastern European groups. But the number of Hispanic voters still isn't nearly large enough to change the outcome of elections there.

Still, the Maryland General Assembly will be getting more diverse in the years to come. Particularly in Montgomery and Prince George's counties, which will be picking up a few additional legislative seats, the number of minority delegates could grow substantially.

It could happen in Howard County, too, which added 22,000 Asians over the past 10 years — 14 percent of the county's total population. Charles County's rapid African-American growth makes it likely that Southern Maryland soon could be electing minority delegates to serve in Annapolis.

For Republicans, the only good census news was continuing growth in GOP areas across the state's northern border from Washington County to Cecil County and on the Eastern Shore. Yet, even in these regions a growing number of minorities are moving in.

Frederick County, for instance, now has a 22 percent minority population (up from 12 percent a decade ago), and Harford County's minority population grew to 21 percent of the county's total.

Unfortunately for the GOP, growth in the far-out suburbs has slowed considerably. Maryland's population increase since 2000 (477,000) was the slowest since the 1970s.

Yet, there are exceptions. Washington County (15,507) attracted more new residents than at any time in its history. The same was true for St. Mary's County (18,940) and Cecil County (15,517), where more growth is expected as military base realignment move-ins accelerate, and contractors and consultants look for homes within a short commute of Aberdeen Proving Ground.

The most immediate concern for legislators in Annapolis, and for the governor, is redrawing Maryland's eight congressional districts based on the new census numbers.

This becomes complicated and extremely partisan. State House Democrats are determined to safeguard the state's six Democratic representatives while placing the two Republicans — Roscoe Bartlett and Andy Harris — in jeopardy.

It won't be easy to achieve. Reshaping political districts is the equivalent of trying to squeeze a balloon: As soon as one area is compressed, another part of the balloon expands.

Thus, if Democrats try to weaken Harris in the 1st Congressional District (he must lose 23,000 voters to reach the ideal new district size of 721,000) by subtracting Republican-leaning precincts in Baltimore County, they may hurt Harris but also harm Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger in the neighboring 2nd Congressional District, who needs to add 21,000 voters.

Last year, Harris won with 54 percent of the vote, and Ruppersberger won with 64 percent. Shifting too many Republican-leaning precincts into the 2nd District might shrink Ruppersberger's margin to the point that he's vulnerable.

State Del. Pat McDonough, a conservative Republican from eastern Baltimore County, already thinks that will happen: He wants to run against the incumbent congressman next year.

Through the magic of computer mapping, it's also possible the governor and legislative leaders might dramatically reconfigure all the congressional districts so both Harris' district and Bartlett's Western Maryland district contain many more Democratic-leaning precincts while not placing the six other incumbents in danger.

That's a lot easier to do when all the growth in Maryland is coming from groups that consistently vote Democratic.

Barry Rascovar is a State House columnist and communications consultant. His e-mail address is brascovar@hotmail.com.