’20 census review reveals 14 states were miscounted
WASHINGTON — The 2020 census undercounted the population of six states and overcounted residents in eight others, the Census Bureau said, a finding that highlighted the difficulties of conducting the most star-crossed population count in living memory.
The conclusions come from a survey of 161,000 housing units conducted after the census was completed, a standard procedure following each oncein-a-decade head count of the U.S. population. The results showed that six states — Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas — most likely have a larger population than was officially counted.
Eight states probably have fewer residents than were recorded, the survey found: Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Utah. The count in the remaining 36 states and the District of Columbia was basically accurate, the bureau said.
The results were markedly worse than in the 2010 census, in which none of the states had a statistically significant overcount or undercount, the agency found.
John Thompson, director of the Census Bureau from 2013 to 2017, said he was not surprised by the variations. “All censuses have overcounts and undercounts,” he said. “That does not preclude using the results.”
Still, for the states that missed the mark, the numbers were striking. The bureau said the greatest undercount was in Arkansas, where the census probably missed 5.04% of the population — about 160,000 people.
The Census Bureau said in March that the same survey had found undercounts of Black and Latino people in the national population totals, as well as overcounts of white people and people of Asian descent. Overcounts of white people and undercounts of other racial and ethnic groups have been a persistent problem in past censuses.
The postmortem will not change the official state-bystate results of the census, which said 331,449,281 people were living in the United States in 2020. Nor will it alter the allotment of seats in the House of Representatives or the map boundaries in state and local political districts, which are redrawn every 10 years using census results.
The survey did not attempt to determine why some states were miscounted, but experts say there are many possible explanations, led by the COVID-19 pandemic, which roared across the country as the census was being conducted.