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

[muon2]

New York was 89 people away from not losing any seats?

What.

I guess when those people were declaring "I'm leaving New York!" they actually meant leaving Manhattan for Westchester or LI.

Or barely anyone other than a few self-important pundits actually left cities?

Anyway, this is good but CA losing while so many other places don't is just disgusting.

Oh there were definitely people who left cities, just 1) not as much as the media portrayed it, and 2) not as far from major cities as the media also portrayed--people moved from Manhattan to Jersey City/Westchester, or from DC to Arlington/Alexandria

The answer was incorrect in terms of the intent of the question. By my calculation NY needed 3,056 more people to overtake MN. The spread in the proportional value for the seat was less than 100. I'll post the bubble seats with their proportional value shortly so you can judge how close states were to the threshold.

[muon2]

THE TABLES !!!

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/population-change-data-table.pdf

NY over 20 million !!

PA over 13 million !

I used the table in this link and I got slightly different priority values than the table in the linked tweet. Is this not the apportionment table?

https://twitter.com/greggiroux/status/1386771549038985218

[muon2]

To use an example of my discrepancy, I see MN has a resident population of p = 5,706,494. p/7 = 815,213.43 and p/8 = 713,311.75. Multiply these and take the square root and I get 762,562.34 which isn't what was in the tweet (762,997.71). Do I have the wrong MN population or is the tweet incorrect? It would matter if NY sues of the margin by which they missed a seat.

[muon2]

THE TABLES !!!

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/population-change-data-table.pdf

NY over 20 million !!

PA over 13 million !

I used the table in this link and I got slightly different priority values than the table in the linked tweet. Is this not the apportionment table?

https://twitter.com/greggiroux/status/1386771549038985218

I also got different numbers than the tweet. Did you get the 435th seat as 762,562.3367?

You guys are mixing up resident population with apportionment population.

Here are both next to each other:

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/apportionment-2020-tableA.pdf

The apportionment population excludes DC, but includes the overseas military.

I understand the difference, but I trusted that your original link was correct. Now I see that it wasn't the link for the apportionment population.

[muon2]

^oh I see. The table you originally linked only had resident population

Here's the full page:

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/dec/2020-apportionment-data.html

That page link would have been helpful to post in the first place. It's hard enough trying to enter data while listening to the news conference. As I said, I trusted that your first link was going to be correct.

[muon2]

I have updated my cartogram of the states for the new Electoral College.

[muon2]

New York was 89 people away from not losing any seats?

What.

I guess when those people were declaring "I'm leaving New York!" they actually meant leaving Manhattan for Westchester or LI.

Or barely anyone other than a few self-important pundits actually left cities?

Anyway, this is good but CA losing while so many other places don't is just disgusting.

Oh there were definitely people who left cities, just 1) not as much as the media portrayed it, and 2) not as far from major cities as the media also portrayed--people moved from Manhattan to Jersey City/Westchester, or from DC to Arlington/Alexandria

The answer was incorrect in terms of the intent of the question. By my calculation NY needed 3,056 more people to overtake MN. The spread in the proportional value for the seat was less than 100. I'll post the bubble seats with their proportional value shortly so you can judge how close states were to the threshold.

I think
89 is the correct answer.

Quotient for Minnesota is 5,709,752 / sqrt (7* = 762998

New York would need a population of 762998 * sqrt (26*27) = 20,215,840

New York change needed is 20,215,840 - 20,215,751 = 89

I agree with this. I relied on the table in Tender's original link, and that turned out to not include overseas population. That cut the shortage from over 3K to under 100. Given all the uncertainty in the Census collection and given that the pandemic was most prominent in NYC on Census Day, I would not be surprised to see a lawsuit to address the NY situation.

[muon2]

New York was 89 people away from not losing any seats?

What.

I guess when those people were declaring "I'm leaving New York!" they actually meant leaving Manhattan for Westchester or LI.

Or barely anyone other than a few self-important pundits actually left cities?

Anyway, this is good but CA losing while so many other places don't is just disgusting.

Oh there were definitely people who left cities, just 1) not as much as the media portrayed it, and 2) not as far from major cities as the media also portrayed--people moved from Manhattan to Jersey City/Westchester, or from DC to Arlington/Alexandria

The answer was incorrect in terms of the intent of the question. By my calculation NY needed 3,056 more people to overtake MN. The spread in the proportional value for the seat was less than 100. I'll post the bubble seats with their proportional value shortly so you can judge how close states were to the threshold.

I think
89 is the correct answer.

Quotient for Minnesota is 5,709,752 / sqrt (7* = 762998

New York would need a population of 762998 * sqrt (26*27) = 20,215,840

New York change needed is 20,215,840 - 20,215,751 = 89

In the media focus on NY ending up 89 people short, they miss the fact that had MN counted 26 fewer people they would have lost the seat to NY. The asymmetry of the differences is due to the size of sqrt(26*27) in NY compared to sqrt(7* in MN.

[muon2]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

That was common practice in the 19th century. I did a thread about what would have happened had the practice been codified and 435 was never fixed as the number of seats. I've just posted an update for that thread with the effect of the 2020 Census.

With the release of the 2020 apportionment populations I can continue the series. In this timeline the 1929 act never happened to lock in 435 members in the House, but instead codified what had been common practice since the Civil War. Initially no state could lose a seat due to reapportionment, but that was modified by the 1947 Act such that no state that gains population over the decade can lose seats. In 2010 the total in the House was 1140 members.

In the 2020 Census IL, MS and WV lost population and both IL and WV lose a seat as OH is the last to be brought up to their status quo. VT and WY remain with 2 seats, so DC continues to get 4 electors. There are now 1193 members in the House and the average district has 278 K inhabitants.

[muon2]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

That was common practice in the 19th century. I did a thread about what would have happened had the practice been codified and 435 was never fixed as the number of seats. I've just posted an update for that thread with the effect of the 2020 Census.

With the release of the 2020 apportionment populations I can continue the series. In this timeline the 1929 act never happened to lock in 435 members in the House, but instead codified what had been common practice since the Civil War. Initially no state could lose a seat due to reapportionment, but that was modified by the 1947 Act such that no state that gains population over the decade can lose seats. In 2010 the total in the House was 1140 members.

In the 2020 Census IL, MS and WV lost population and both IL and WV lose a seat as OH is the last to be brought up to their status quo. VT and WY remain with 2 seats, so DC continues to get 4 electors. There are now 1193 members in the House and the average district has 278 K inhabitants.

On the flipside of this, do you want 1200 members of the House? The House has become so incredibly centralized in power in each party that there's only about 30 to 40 people in the House total where their opinion matters (and with the removal of power from Committee chairs the past few decades in favor of party leadership, you can argue it's even less), so from a purely legislating point of view, increasing the size of the House from 435 to 1193, you're adding 758 backbenchers that are only going to vote as their leadership tells them to.

OTOH a smaller constituency makes it easier to vote the district and not the party. That's especially true if anti-gerrymandering laws keep district lines from carving up identifiable communities and piecing together distant fragments. That would make it easier for a representative to be known as an individual and not merely as a label. That in turn could lead to more independent and perhaps third party representatives.

I'm also of the opinion that we are on a swing of the polarization pendulum toward one extreme, much as 60 years ago was at the opposite extreme of depolarization between the major parties. I wouldn't want to design an electoral system that locks in the idea of how parties operate in any one decade.

[muon2]

The house size needs to be expanded. The undercount is so obvious here

If just nineteen seats were added to the house, no states would lose any seats this redistricting cycle (I believe WV-3 is the 454th seat). You’d have thought that some representative from a state that’s losing out would want to put forward a bill to expand the house a bit so they can keep their seat...

That was common practice in the 19th century. I did a thread about what would have happened had the practice been codified and 435 was never fixed as the number of seats. I've just posted an update for that thread with the effect of the 2020 Census.

With the release of the 2020 apportionment populations I can continue the series. In this timeline the 1929 act never happened to lock in 435 members in the House, but instead codified what had been common practice since the Civil War. Initially no state could lose a seat due to reapportionment, but that was modified by the 1947 Act such that no state that gains population over the decade can lose seats. In 2010 the total in the House was 1140 members.

In the 2020 Census IL, MS and WV lost population and both IL and WV lose a seat as OH is the last to be brought up to their status quo. VT and WY remain with 2 seats, so DC continues to get 4 electors. There are now 1193 members in the House and the average district has 278 K inhabitants.

On the flipside of this, do you want 1200 members of the House? The House has become so incredibly centralized in power in each party that there's only about 30 to 40 people in the House total where their opinion matters (and with the removal of power from Committee chairs the past few decades in favor of party leadership, you can argue it's even less), so from a purely legislating point of view, increasing the size of the House from 435 to 1193, you're adding 758 backbenchers that are only going to vote as their leadership tells them to.

OTOH a smaller constituency makes it easier to vote the district and not the party. That's especially true if anti-gerrymandering laws keep district lines from carving up identifiable communities and piecing together distant fragments. That would make it easier for a representative to be known as an individual and not merely as a label.

How many elected representatives are there in state legislatures elected on third-party labels? There's 1 in Wyoming that is a Libertarian.

There are many in state legislatures who act as independents or even as if they were in a different party. There was a recent state rep in IL who voted more like a conservative libertarian than the R label he ran under. Part of the problem is ballot access for anyone other than an R or D in IL. Ballot access for independents and third parties is easier here at local races, and it's not unusual to see an independent slate beat a party in township races.

[muon2]

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but if there was a significant Hispanic undercount, would it have affected Mexican/Central American Americans more than groups like Cuban Americans?

Most likely.  I bet FL and TX were both undercounted though.  

Good going Republicans!  Making Hispanics afraid to answer the census likely cost you two seats in Congress and 2 electoral votes for a decade.

This is the standard take, but I think it needs more supporting evidence that it currently has, which we’ll only know when we get the redistricting data.

FL and TX only mildly missed their estimates baselines - both by less than a point, depending on the baseline. MN beat its estimates baseline by about 1 point, AL 2 and NY and RI about 4 points. So the real story may be NY and (especially) RI doing much better than expected more than TX and FL lagging. (PR, HI, NJ and VT were among the other major overachievers).

AZ significantly underperformed its baseline estimate, just as it did in 2010. It’s a serial lagger for some reason.

Hmmm... this makes it seem more like an issue with the estimates missing young Millennial/Gen Z urban hipsters than the census itself missing Sunbelt Hispanics?

I think another variable that should be considered is state spending on Census activities. Here's a mid-2019 CBPP graph on spending for Complete Count committees, and that was just one aspect.


CA, IL, and NY all made large investments and overperformed estimates. AZ, TX and FL provided minimal support and underperformed. CA had shown how well this works back in the 2000 Census and overperformed despite the negative attacks on immigrants the prior decade in the form of Prop 187. I don't have figures on all state-level Census spending which also included community outreach through non-count organizations and local follow up during the pandemic restrictions. If I find them, I may do some correlation analysis.

[muon2]

I'm a county party chair of a third party so I'm more gung-ho about it than you are by definition, but this is a false argument. It does not matter in the argument you are making how they are voting, it matters what the people elect them as. Because if you're for example a libertarian Republican, you're still a Republican at the ballot box. Not all people are going to automatically switch your vote to continue backing you if you changed your party label or became independent because education about who is on the ballot and what they stand for considerably declines really once you get past any statewide race in this country and becomes reflexively about voting for a party ID.

I generally agree with that, but there are three townships near me that have been successfully and repeatedly won by third-party slates. I've worked closely with them at times, and advised them on how to navigate some of the ballot access, vacancy and candidate replacement laws.

I've learned a bit about how they have made it work. Most townships have partisan elections. Each of these three is based on a local party that only exists in the one township, and the slates are actually a mix of D, R, and I individuals based on my personal acquaintance with them. Their success has been based on the smaller size of their constituencies - 20 K to 50 K, and once in office they've been aided by incumbency. Educating voters is much easier on a small scale, especially if it seems to the voters that it is a local, grassroots effort.

[muon2]

Fun fact - Yakutat borough AK has the exact same population it did in 2010: 662.