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

[Non Swing Voter]

Last-minute prediction:

One or a few states will throw a tantrum because their populations will be far off (=lower) than the estimates ...

name the states

[Non Swing Voter]

Last-minute prediction:

One or a few states will throw a tantrum because their populations will be far off (=lower) than the estimates ...

name the states

Mostly the large states I would say, or those who miss a seat by a small margin.

But it’s also possible that there could be an overcount (more people were at home last year) and therefore the smaller states would tend to lose out more vs. the bigger states ...

NY and CA? 

It would be annoying if Texas throws a hissy fit because they "only" gain 2 seats and not 3.

[Non Swing Voter]

Wait are these the actual reapportionment?  Florida only got 1 seat?  NY only lost 1?  What happened to the massive southern growth we keep hearing about?

[Non Swing Voter]

Wait are these the actual reapportionment?  Florida only got 1 seat?  NY only lost 1?  What happened to the massive southern growth we keep hearing about?

If New York had 90 more people, it would not have lost any seats. Wow.

Seriously? 

[Non Swing Voter]

this wasn't the electoral windfall Republicans were expecting.  They have to be pretty disappointed.  

[Non Swing Voter]

Also, what happened to Arizona?  Thought it was certain to gain a seat.  And I also thought Rhode Island was certain to lose a seat.  Seems like the predictions were way way off this year.

[Non Swing Voter]

some GOP congressman in rural NY is going to lose their seat anyways. 

[Non Swing Voter]

It is impossible to say if Cuomo "cost NY a seat."  Perhaps covid made New Yorkers shelter in place and not move out of state in 2020? 

Plus, who cares, it just went to another blue state.  It's not like it was NY and Kentucky vying for the last seat.

[Non Swing Voter]

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.

[Non Swing Voter]

Which states are whining around so far after the results are out ?

I know of NY and Cuomo complaining, but who else ?

I don't see how anyone other than NY could complain.  The next state, Ohio, isn't even close to the number they needed.

I have heard some Democratic politicians complaining about the undercount of hispanics in Arizona, and to a lesser extent Texas, and Florida. 

[Non Swing Voter]

Wait a damn minute, South Carolina could have lost a seat? All the time people in the state brag about having some of the fastest growing areas (Horry, Charleston, Greenville) and we could’ve lost one?

Well, your state is extremely rural. Honestly, I think this could be a factor that works against SC/GA/NC/TN going forward. Even if the cities keep booming, I'd be completely unsurprised to see rural populations converge towards 10-15%. That's equivalent to ~10% of SC's population disappearing--which would require a whole lot of growth in the cities to make up.

This might also explain the flatlining in VA. VA-09 and VA-04 are hemorrhaging people, as is the southern half of VA-05. 

Also Fairfax county growth has really slowed down. The Inner ring"urban" area of Alexandria and Arlington are now growing fast and Loudon/PWC are booming though.

https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/demographics/sites/demographics/files/assets/demographicreports/fullrpt.pdf

Fairfax county still grew by almost 100,000 people (I actually would have expected more based on all of the skyscrapers that have recently gone up around Tysons, Reston, etc.).  In raw numbers this is basically the same as Loudoun, but now that Fairfax is hovering around 1.2 million people it's hard for it to grow as a percentage. 

The point about rural Virginia is definitely true.  There are some downstate towns where half the downtown areas are completely boarded up.  So NOVA's huge growth is offset by that.  If they just kept pace Virginia would probably be gaining a congressional seat. 

Virginia recently legalized gambling in hopes of revitalizing some of these downstate areas but I doubt it will help that much.

[Non Swing Voter]

Given the makeup of the Supreme Court, this could be the last census in which imputation can be used:

Conservatives aim at Census' method for uncounted households

When U.S. Census Bureau workers couldn't find out any information about some households after repeatedly mailing them questionnaire reminders and sending census takers to knock on their doors, the statisticians turned to an obscure, last-resort statistical technique known as “imputation.”

Less than 1% of households were counted using the technique during the 2020 census. But some conservative political groups are questioning it, potentially laying a foundation for legal challenges to the data that will ultimately be used for drawing congressional and legislative districts.

Imputation involves using information about neighbors with similar characteristics to fill in head counts or demographic characteristics for households lacking data. For instance, a rowhouse with no information may be counted as having two people if a neighboring rowhouse is occupied by two people. The technique tends to be utilized in hard-to-count places, often with racial and ethnic minorities, where people haven’t answered the census questionnaire and could otherwise go uncounted.

“It makes the overall dataset — or census in this case — more accurate than leaving the gaps blank," Pat Cantwell, a bureau official, said in a blog post earlier this year. “By using imputation, we fill in what we don’t know, using information we do know."

The focus for conservatives is on how this technique was applied to college dorms, nursing homes, prisons and other places where people live in groups. These residents were particularly difficult to count during the 2020 census because the pandemic sent college students fleeing campuses and put nursing homes in lockdown. In response, the Census Bureau unexpectedly decided to use the technique for group housing, where about 3% of the U.S. population lives.

I'm not a conservative but this seems like a terrible way to go about it.  Just haphazardly counting dorms or row houses when the person might have moved or responded to the census at their parents place, etc., seems very very wrong.

[Non Swing Voter]

I am late to the party.  So rural areas did even worse than expected?  i.e., they are way overrepresented in congress right now?  this doesn't seem too surprising given how out of touch congress is with real America.

[Non Swing Voter]

Seems like Dems now have a golden opportunity to gerrymander the hell out of NY.

[Non Swing Voter]

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

Kind of amazing.  The county population change map basically looks like a blue vs. red map, with blue counties almost universally gaining population and red counties mostly losing population.  Yet everyone still seems to think redistricting will be a big boon to Republicans (even though they control less of the process than they did last time).

[Non Swing Voter]

If you look at a lot of the city growth you can see how the new economy is concentrating populations in and around new cities with a significant university presence versus old industrial ones.  For instance, Raleigh area in NC, Boston, MA.  Or if you look at Madison vs. Milwaukee in WI.  Probably lots of startup tech companies and other things in the same region as the universities people went to (which can also get a lot of skilled workers). 

[Non Swing Voter]

Seems like Dems now have a golden opportunity to gerrymander the hell out of NY.

When they do, where do Long and Staten Island Republicans go? Upstate NY? Florida?

Why would they go anywhere?  They are already the minority in state politics.

[Non Swing Voter]

Seems like Dems now have a golden opportunity to gerrymander the hell out of NY.

When they do, where do Long and Staten Island Republicans go? Upstate NY? Florida?

Why would they go anywhere?  They are already the minority in state politics.

Why would they stay where their views are not represented? They'll move to FL or maybe PA

Right but what about this election changes anything?  NY has been voting Democratic for 40 years.  Why would these people decide to leave now because their "views are not represented"?

Also, people get too worked up about national politics but if anything local politicians have a lot more impact on their day to day lives.

[Non Swing Voter]

So basically no real suprises in the census; cities and well off rural areas generally grew while rural areas shrunk.

Yeah.  People here, and even redistricting experts, seem surprised by the magnitude of rural shrink and urban growth, but I am really not sure why.  Anyone who has traveled around this country a fair bit should know that rural areas are in massive decline almost unilaterally and people have been moving into cities all decade.  It seems like that's tempered the last couple of years and now suburbs are the major growth driver, but not enough to change the census numbers.

This is the main reason I think people are overestimating the GOP's chances in 2022.  Yes they will gerrymander (so will Dems), but there are also a lot of places that have some form of non-partisan commission and right now a lot of Republican areas are overrepresented in terms of their actual populations.  This is especially true in state legislatures too.