Routine review shows miscount in 14 states, but won’t alter data

WASHINGTON » The 2020 census undercounted the population of six states and overcounted residents in eight others, the Census Bureau said Thursday, a finding that highlighted the difficulties of conducting the count.

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 Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas most likely have a larger population than was 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. But they were not unlike the conclusions from the 2000 census postmortem, which found overcounts in 22 states and an undercount in the District of Columbia.

John H. 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 likely missed 5.04% of the population — 160,000 people.

The bureau said in March that the same survey found undercounts of Black and Hispanic people in the national population totals, as well as overcounts of white people and people of Asian descent.