The U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 22, 2018.
R E P R E S E N TAT I O N
2020 Census Errors Favor Blue States
Population miscounts have given blue states 3 extra congressional seats, Electoral College votess
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By Petr Svab epublican-leaning states have been shortchanged at least three congressional seats and Electoral College votes because their populations were undercounted in the 2020 census. Democrat-leaning states received at least one extra seat and vote because of census overcounts and kept at least two that they should have lost, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s post-census survey. The bureau acknowledged the errors but stated that there’s no way to correct them until the next census in 2030. Several experts and at least one lawmaker have expressed concern over the errors.
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“It’s consistently undercounting red states and consistently overcounting blue states,” said Hans von Spakovsky, head of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He called it “a very odd coincidence,” noting that “so far, the Census Bureau hasn’t really explained how and why they made these mistakes.” It appears that the first to sound the alarm over the issue back in June was Fair Lines America (FLA), a conservative-leaning nonprofit focused on redistricting issues. “It’s obviously concerning that there’s a pattern in the error of the census,” said Adam Kincaid, executive director of FLA
and the National Republican Redistricting Trust. The Census Bureau identified 14 states with statistically significant errors in the census count. Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas—all Republican-dominated, except for Illinois—were undercounted. Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah—all Democrat-dominated save for Ohio and Utah—were overcounted. For comparison, no state saw a significant error in the 2000 and 2010 censuses. The 2020 error pattern still holds when including states in which the miscount didn’t reach statistical significance.
