USA 2020 Census Results Thread (Release: Today, 26 April)

[Roronoa D. Law]

Welp congrats GOP on trying to undercount Hispanics.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Pretty clear that the anti-immigrant rhetoric hurt FL and TX.

There was a clear intimidation campaign by the Trump administration to undercount the Hispanic community and it back fired. Had they saw the results out of Florida and TX house they would have reconsidered.

[Roronoa D. Law]

I truly believe the Hispanic community was undercounted. We won't know for sure till the June release but right now we got to work with the incoming metropolitan and county-level results.

[Roronoa D. Law]

These patterns seem extremely suggestive of large Latino under-counts, likely down to the Trump admin's relentless politicizing and citizenship question.

Yes, but if so, not in NY or NJ...

You could say there is less of a negative stigma of immigration in Democratic states.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Anyone have the first 2030 estimates? lol

I don't know but I get the feeling that Boise and SLC are the metros to watch this decade. Whether it shows up in apportionment by 2030 is beyond my guess.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Anyone have the first 2030 estimates? lol

I don't know but I get the feeling that Boise and SLC are the metros to watch this decade. Whether it shows up in apportionment by 2030 is beyond my guess.

Correct. 10-year projections are a crapshoot but the inner Mountain West (Idaho to 3, Utah and Nevada to 5, Arizona to 10) all look probable for 2030.

MS-04 has to be in danger for 2030 if the current trend continues.  How far from the chopping block was MS this time around?

MS with zero growth is 1m/seat for 3 seats or 750k/seat for 4 seats. I don't think there's any chance the U.S. grows that much faster than MS that it drops to 3 seats.

MS birth rate is the only thing allowing it to break even.

[Roronoa D. Law]

VA not having gained anything since 1990 is honestly astonishing to me.

It suffers Black Belt population loss like the rest of the South and its Applachian parts are free-falling like West Virginia and Kentucky. TN, SC, NC, and GA have mid-size cities or resort communities to stop it from free-falling like that. 

[Roronoa D. Law]

While not official. If anybody is interested the 2020 estimates for incorporated places are out.

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/technical-documentation/research/evaluation-estimates.html

[Roronoa D. Law]

Alright, here are some of the trends I noticed overall about this census:

1. The rural/urban split is worse than we thought:

While the estimates had been showing urban areas as the centers of growth and rural areas as declining. The census really puts the nail in the coffin, showing even worse figures than anticipated.

2. Sun Belt ain't so hot:

This seems to be the story after every single census. For all the reports about huge growth in the sunbelt, it always seems to be overexaggerated. The estimates for areas such as San Antonio and Phoenix were noticeably bad, but in general most urban, suburban, and rural areas down south underperformed.

3. NYC lives:

Again, another classic story from this decade; the death/decline of NYC. Turns out, city actually grew faster than the US this decade. I expect more stories about how the city is dying over this coming decade. Hell, we've already got a plethora to work from with 2020.

4. Moving data biases:

This one is more of a meta trend, but it really does look like sites such as Zillow, Redfin, Uhaul, etc. are missing something. Much of the predictions about growth have been based on their estimates, but it turns out that they grossly missed changes almost everywhere, with NYC being an extreme example. Perhaps this is due to the fact that those who use these sites tend to be young, well-off, and white? I honestly do not know for sure.

5. No real Hispanic undercount:

For all the worry about this, it looks like there wasn't really any undercount to speak of.

The sunbelt being so off my point to the Hispanic undercount happening a bit there.  And I know that in Arkansas, a lot of the cities have beat out the population estimates.  Fayetteville for example beat them out by 6k to pass Fort Smith for second largest.

I'm still in the belief that there might be an undercount. Census has always had problems reaching out to minority communities. Not to mention that Republicans gave off the indication last year that they were betting on a minority undercount and many of the sunbelt cities' growth are mostly minority driven.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Whether estimates were right or wrong. Republicans still face the problem of population delineation, population shift, and political trends going into this redistricting cycle. Republican incumbents will now have to pick up more Democratic trending areas or forfeit a seat. Especially if they want to avoid another Texas or Atlanta hiccup again.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Whether estimates were right or wrong. Republicans still face the problem of population delineation, population shift, and political trends going into this redistricting cycle. Republican incumbents will now have to pick up more Democratic trending areas or forfeit a seat. Especially if they want to avoid another Texas or Atlanta hiccup again.

...this is mostly not true, and especially not true in TX, where Republicans will probably be getting redder seats than anticipated as a result of the differences between the Census and the estimates. Otherwise a statement like this needs more geographic specificity.

 

I would argue that those spots in blue are not places where Republicans want to be losing population.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Is there a link to the data. I want to look at NC.

Population data

https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=2566121a73de463995ed2b2fd7ff6eb7

Demographic data

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/racial-and-ethnic-diversity-in-the-united-states-2010-and-2020-census.html

[Roronoa D. Law]

Nothing shows how bad the Northeast was underestimated more than Philadelphia Metro and Boston Metro back at #7 and #10 respectively.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Some good for Dems in GA. Hall, Columbia, and Paulding look to have been overestimated while Muscogee, Richmond, and Bibb were underestimated.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Welp so much for that post recession rural come back.

[Roronoa D. Law]

I'm not sure why people think these numbers will result in dems losing less seats in redistricting. You can still do 10-4 GA, 11-3 NC, 26-12 TX, 20-8 FL, 13-2 OH, 9-0 TN and so on. You just have to shift things with populations changes but you can still draw out dem incumbents and put them in safe R seats.

Wait how is that even possible or legal. 

[Roronoa D. Law]

"Shrinking America" is almost exclusively trending right

"Growing America" is overwhelmingly trending left.

Good thing* that Shrinking America is growing at Growing America's expense...

The real question here is whether these shifts are causal (which I actually suspect; Democrats are the status quo party and Republicans are the party calling for revolutionary change) or whether there might be some background factor causing both size change and political preferences. Thus, would a growing area that starts to shrink switch from D to R? (I think it does, which is a pretty apocalyptic fact for Ds as they currently exist).

*Purely from a political standpoint.

But there aren't many places like Scranton and Cleveland left for Republicans to go to. Denver and Houston both slowed down toward the end of the decade but nobody believes that Republicans are going to come back winning Colorado or Harris county anytime soon. Meanwhile, if Democrats can breakthrough in some of these midsize metros like Charleston, Anchorage, and SLC. I think that will death nail in Republican's attempts at relying on institutional advantage.

[Roronoa D. Law]

"Shrinking America" is almost exclusively trending right

"Growing America" is overwhelmingly trending left.

Flashback to 2004 when something like 97 of the country’s 100 fastest-growing counties voted for George W. Bush, and 1 of the 3 was Clark County, Nev. What does it say that things have changed so dramatically?

I still think that the fastest growing counties today, atleast well over a majority are still republicans but have trended to the Dems. I would have to guess a similar story could have been argued for 2004 as well

I forgot who said but some on this board said that it generally takes about 10 years for the demographics to show up in the electorate. For example, Georgia back in 2010 was 61% white but we didn't get a white electorate around 61% till like last year.

[Roronoa D. Law]

"Shrinking America" is almost exclusively trending right

"Growing America" is overwhelmingly trending left.

Flashback to 2004 when something like 97 of the country’s 100 fastest-growing counties voted for George W. Bush, and 1 of the 3 was Clark County, Nev. What does it say that things have changed so dramatically?

I still think that the fastest growing counties today, atleast well over a majority are still republicans but have trended to the Dems. I would have to guess a similar story could have been argued for 2004 as well

I forgot who said but some on this board said that it generally takes about 10 years for the demographics to show up in the electorate. For example, Georgia back in 2010 was 61% white but we didn't get a white electorate around 61% till like last year.

It was actually 55% "non Hispanic white" back in 2010 not 61%, this census they changed up the methodologies on how race is calculated so  the results may look stranger than they actually are.

My bad I was looking at combined. Still shows that it takes some time for the demographics to show up in electorate.