According to new analysis of the 2020 Census, Texas had the highest undercount of any US state in raw numbers. It’s estimated some 377,000 in the state weren’t included in the count.
Nationally, the 2020 census missed an estimated 1.6 million people, but given hurdles posed by the pandemic and natural disasters, the undercount was smaller than expected, according to the data reviewed by a think tank that did computer simulations of the nation’s head count.
The analysis, done by the Urban Institute and released Tuesday, found that people of color, renters, noncitizens, children and people living in Texas — the state that saw the nation’s largest growth — were most likely to be missed, though by smaller margins than some had projected. Still, those shortfalls could affect the drawing of political districts and distribution of federal spending.
The analysis estimates there was a 0.5% undercount of the nation’s population during the 2020 census. If that modeled estimate holds true, it would be greater than the 0.01% undercount in the 2010 census but in the same range as the 0.49% undercount in the 2000 census.
Texas and Mississippi were undercounted by 1.28% and 1.3%, respectively, in the simulated count. Minnesota, Iowa, New Hampshire and Wisconsin also registered overcounts in the simulation, an unsurprising conclusion since they had among the highest self-response rates in the nation during the actual count.
About a fifth of the U.S. residents not counted in the Urban Institute’s simulations lived in Texas, and that could have real-life consequences. According to the Urban Institute analysis, Texas stands to miss out on $247 million in 2021 federal Medicaid reimbursements for being undercounted.
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“The fact that the undercount wasn’t larger is surprising and certainly a good news story,” said Diana Elliott, principal research associate at the Urban Institute. “This undercount suggests the 2020 census may not be as close in accuracy as 2010, but it may not be as dire as some had feared.”
The official undercount or overcount of the census won’t be known until next year when the Census Bureau releases a report card on its accuracy. The bureau’s post-enumeration survey measures the accuracy of the census by independently surveying a sample of the population and estimating how many people and housing units were missed or counted erroneously
Indeed, it could have been a lot worse. The Republicans did everything they could to make it as hard as possible to get an accurate count, so kudos to the Census Department for overcoming as well as they did. For more on the Urban Institute’s research and results, see here for an overview, here for a state-by-state guide, and here for the specifics about Texas. Daily Kos has more.
My math suggests that had Texas’ undercount been in line with that of the U.S., then we would have had about 230K added to the Census. I am too lazy to look up by how much Texas missed another congressional district, but my guess is that an extra 230K residents wouldn’t have led to another district. Nonetheless, the undercount skews all the maps away from locations where the undercounts reside.
Blank: All the statistical analyses I read before the census numbers released projected Texas gaining 3 seats. And they all explained why/how statistical estimates were likely more accurate than the actual census count. So.
Not sure where using post-facto statistical analysis performed on the erroneous census results themselves fit into that ranking of bad/worse/worst ways to count people.