It appears Utah will get a fourth seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 — that is, if new population projections by the U.S. Census Bureau are accurate.

By the next decennial census, Utah's population is projected to exceed the 2,463,593 people it would need to add another congressional seat, according to an analysis of the census projections by the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget. The census projects Utah's 2010 population will be about 2.6 million.

Actually, according to official state estimates for 2004 Utah has already grown enough to gain the extra seat, said Robert Spendlove, manager of demographic and economic analysis for the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget. Current census estimates place Utah just under that number.

"Assuming the Census Bureau overall is accurately reflecting state-to-state growth . . . , this is what we expect to see," Spendlove said. "It is virtually impossible for Utah not to qualify for an additional seat in 2010."

The apportionment formula is based on a state's growth and size, relative to other states, Spendlove said.

U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, who sits on the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, said Utah will also gain regional representation from other fast-growing Western states.

"The issues of the West are different from the East," he said. "We'll have much better attention in the West."

Utah, which is projected by the census to grow by 16 percent from 2000 to 2010, probably won't qualify for a fifth seat, though, Spendlove said. Even Nevada, projected to be the nation's fastest-growing state, is expected to gain only one seat in 2010, he said.

"It's very difficult for a small state to gain two seats in one census," he said.

Utah, he said, would need a population of 3,180,485 to gain a fifth seat. Even the state population estimates, which place Utah's population at about 2.8 million in 2010, fall short of that mark, he said.

Utah narrowly missed gaining an extra House seat in 2000. The seat went to North Carolina instead. Thousands of LDS missionaries from Utah serve abroad and likely weren't counted. However, many of North Carolina's overseas residents were counted because they were military personnel.

Utah has lost two challenges to the census results. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Utah in its challenge against the Census Bureau's use of "imputation," which allows head counters who can't reach anyone at home to use data from a neighbor's household. The state had also unsuccessfully said its overseas LDS missionary population should have been counted.

Last year, congressional researchers said a Census Bureau test count of Americans living abroad was too difficult and expensive to be included in the 2010 Census.

Cannon said that the Census Bureau has, however, indicated it's "quite easy" to count missionaries in general, so there's a good chance that even if the entire overseas population isn't counted, short-term missionaries may be.

Even though Utah probably won't need to count its missionaries in 2010, Cannon said, "I suspect 25 years from now, we may well need it."

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com