Here's an interesting question: Which state's population turned out to be the most mistaken when the 2020 census results were tabulated? Here's a candidate:
Until yesterday, Arizona was assumed to have a population of 7.4 million in 2020. But the actual census results put their population at 7.1 million. That's an error of about 4%, which might not seem like a lot until you start thinking about federal dollars that are allocated by population. Then it seems a little more serious.
There are other states that had larger missed estimates, but Arizona had by far the biggest overestimate. That is, its estimate was way over its actual count when the results of the census were tabulated. Here are the top 20 missed estimates:
New Jersey and New York both turned out to have more residents than they thought. Arizona and Washington DC are in a class by themselves when it comes to having fewer residents than they thought.
What accounts for large missed estimates like this? Is it really the estimates at fault or did the census itself fail? Perhaps the Census Bureau's statisticians will weigh in on this someday.
Not a problem for Arizona. The Cyber Ninjas will be on the case in a flash. If they can deliver the state for Trump, they can easily fix this too. Arizona’s population true population will be discovered to number in the hundreds of millions; possibly in the billions.
Lol! And all of them loyal Trump voters!
Yes, whether they want to be or not.
300,000 is definitely a big discrepancy. That's like losing the entire city of Chandler, Arizona (population 200,000+).
Yeah, I'm curious as to whether this will lead to a housing bust in Phoenix.
So much housing has gone up so recently, and if it's all based on something of an illusion as to the demand...
Or maybe it all sorts itself out? The houses sell at cost rather than the 20% higher expected, plenty of Californians move to Phoenix based on the cheaper houses, in five years the population matches the projections? Sad for the developers, OK for everyone else.
If there was a bust, rents would have gone down.
It'd almost be a return to normal. Up until the 1990s, housing prices were basically stable when adjusted for inflation (the Case-Shiller Index) for decades.
I wonder if it’s because of snowbirds who live part of the year somewhere else and keep that as their primary residence for voter registration? If you have a house in say Michigan and one in Arizona only one can be your primary residence. So people in Arizona estimated the population correctly just errored on how much of the population doesn’t count for voting purposes.
Why are the overestimated states ones with higher hispanic population growth?
That was my thought, doesn't it sound like wingnuts in the Census Bureau trying not to count minority populations.
Nope but keep trying proggie. Funny how the 4 seats lost in penn, ny, Michigan and Illinois come from Republican areas.
Hitting yourself in the face with a pie is the whole foundation of conservative thought.
BRING BACK BART STUPAK.
Is this true? The three states with the highest percent of Hispanics (NM, CA, TX) aren't on the graph and both NY and NJ are more than 10% Hispanic.
DC is easily explained by them looking at things like service utilization, jobs, etc. - various measures of economic activity... and Maryland's underestimation. Maryland is much cheaper to live in than DC, and the last affordable (or at least less unobtainable) prices for housing are found in ever-shrinking enclaves in Prince George's County (near where I live) and to some extent in some parts of Montgomery County.
For example, I'm 2 miles from the DC line and live in Maryland. I can be in downtown DC in 20 minutes.
Prince George's County and Montgomery County are both easy to live in while still being "in DC."
Meanwhile, Virginia's neighboring counties have been much more in line with DC prices (or even higher in some areas) for years, if not over a decade by now.
Also, a DC overestimation of 3.25% is only about 25,000 people or so.
An MD underestimation of 2% is about 120,000 people.
As a virtually born-and-raised expat DCer, no, those places are not "in DC" 🙂
Hence the quotes, my man. Typing "in DC" is faster than explaining metro areas and how much each of county can find DC proper and all its attractions accessible and so forth.
Surely you aren't suggesting that people who live just outside of DC don't partake in the greater DC markets (of all kinds), are you?
There's a certain radius that is, for most intents and purposes, part of "DC" and that extends beyond the boundaries of DC itself.
Also, fuck living in DC where my vote doesn't count for shit. Just fuck that.
I was born and raised in Montgomery County just over the line from DC. No, we weren't "in DC" but we could be in the district in about 10 minutes. Suburban living with easy access to the city. 🙂
So, NY, PA, IL and MI each losing a House seat but gaining in revenue from the federal gov't. NC gaining a seat, but losing money.
You don't think it's an effect of the highly publicized Trump citizenship Q tussle, depressing response rates?
AZ = -262K
TX = -178K
FL = -163K
But NY, NJ, HI and CA all have very high shares of immigrants
What the 3 states you mention have in common with each other and don't share with the ones I mention is governors aligned with Trump who did not seem to support the census. Not sure that's an answer but it is a hypothesis
It's not just governors; it's majority R control. I didn't mention it, but I thought it was implied that the three biggest losers were all R-controlled states. I probably should have been explicit. 😀
This is a complicated story to tell, without definitive answers. The issue may be as much with the quality of the population estimates as with the census figures. Overall, the census came in 2 million higher than expected. This sounds like a lot, but 0.6% is really not bad.
It appears that the population estimates understated the amount of immigration that occurred during the decade and that movement to states in the Sunbelt from the Rust Belt was overstated. The higher than expected counts are mostly in the Northeast and the lower than expected counts are in the south and west.
It does not appear to be a systematic miscounting of Hispanics, minorities or immigrants because the overestimates/underestimates do not align neatly with any of those things.
Agreed. Also, to a substantial degree, population growth in the US (as in other rich countries) increasingly is synonymous with immigration. In recent years in America, that has often meant immigration from Latin America. So, the states we've typically associated with immigration from this region (California, Arizona, Florida, Texas) have been impacted by the slowdown in the arrival of Latino immigrants, and, crucially, by the actual reduction in (and net emigration of) the undocumented population.
And yes, this very much does include Texas and Florida. Both of those states not only experienced a reduced rate of population growth per this census, they both saw a drop in the absolute size of population expansion vis a vis the previous decade. Indeed those two weren't the only ones.
The Census began right before Covid struck the DC metro area. Suddenly, everybody was told to work from home, schools closed, and urban amenities closed. I wouldn't be surprised if thousands of DC residents decided to go to their second home on the beaches of Delaware or in the mountains of West Virginia, or to temporarily move back to their parents' home in any of the other 48 states. And if they did so before receiving their Census form/reminders in the mail... in all the confusion*, they might not have filled one out at all as residents of anywhere in the nation (or might have filled it out showing their "new" address as their "permanent" one).
*Let's not forget that the majority of new residents in DC skew young... young enough that they may never have filled out a Census form before... and thus didn't think to seek out one themselves if it didn't arrive in the mail at their "new" residence.
Anecdotally, I spent half of March and all of April and May with relatives in PA, helping to take care of another relative. Having filled out Census forms before, I knew to stop my aunt from counting myself in the question that asks you to count "everyone living at this address as of April 1, 2020" because I had already electronically filled out my Census for living in VA. But I'm sure lots of young people who never participated personally in the Census didn't bother to go online and properly count themselves in their "real" home... especially since it was unclear if/when anyone would be allowed back into cities again with states imposing travel restrictions in/out of northeastern states/cities... and just let their parents register them wherever.
Speaking of cutting and running, David Frum lit-out for Canada. Like rich folk have done for centuries in the face of crises:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/i-moved-canada-during-pandemic/614569/
and then came back after things had settled down:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/i-crossed-back-state-denial/616126/
not sure if he decamped again when things got bad once again.
Can’t say that I blame him. Except for family obligations, I’d have ridden out the plague in a safer, more rational country. Maybe Tahiti or New Zealand. Realistically, given a choice, who wouldn’t ?
Probably very few. In keeping with a general "I've got mine" mentality.
Perhaps so but, at the same time, you’re talking about staying in a country where the federal government and many of the states were happy to fuel the rising number of COVID-19 cases regardless of what David Frum wanted or thought the government should do. So it’s hard to fault people who leave rather than risk death or serious illness.
Must be nice to be rich enough to pick and choose where you're going to reside depending on what's most advantageous to yourself at every moment.
Me, I didn't get to choose to have a relative go into cancer treatment the week that everything shutdown everywhere between metro DC and Philadelphia... and then not know if the hastily thrown together bag of clothes and stuff I had with me would be enough if the various state border checks that the media reported were happening to metro NYC residents fleeing the virus would keep me from returning to metro DC anytime soon. This was the time period that I learned first hand: In America, you're totally on your own. In a crisis, the elite and the authorities will vanish pretty quickly, leaving the citizenry to fight over the last roll of toilet paper.
If only we could all get Canadian citizenship to have a Plan B for when everything falls apart, like Frum does.
The Original Recipe Vegan Conservative.
New Jersey, the nation's most mis-underestimated State!
The Northeast is the only region that grew faster in the decade that just ended (10-20) than in the previous one (00-10), with New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts all following this pattern. I wonder why. Part of the reason is probably that the region has been slow-growing for a while now (and so perhaps there was a reduced likelihood of accelerating slowdown), but that's the case with the Midwest, too, and the latter didn't see any rebound in growth.
Once again, policy decisions by the Trump administration to pwn the libs bring to mind the words "hoist" and "petard."
The overestimates are all states (plus DC) assumed to be experiencing strong growth. And they have all been growing. Substantially! Just not as much as we thought. Conversely the underestimates are all states that didn't slow down quite as much as we thought.
The data are interesting, though, for sure. California lost a House seat, but not a single representative was lost from the New England delegation as whole. Also, in the last decade Massachusetts (yes, Massachusetts) grew considerably faster than California, if these numbers are to be believed. When's the last time that could be said? (answer: never).
This is very definitely no longer your father's USA, at least when it comes to demographics.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2021/demo/pop-twps0104.pdf