2020 Census Undercounted Hispanic, Black and Native American Residents

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Saddled with daunting logistical and political obstacles, the 2020 census seriously undercounted the number of Hispanic, Black and Native American residents even though its overall population count of 323.2 million was largely accurate, the Census Bureau said Thursday.

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At the same time, the census overcounted white and Asian residents, the bureau said.

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Those net undercounts of racial minorities, which have historically plagued decennial census counts, mean that some racial and ethnic groups will have less political clout and fewer federal dollars than they are entitled to. Some minority advocacy groups promised to challenge the results in court, but remedying the undercounts would be difficult if not impossible, some experts said.

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Robert L. Santos, the bureau’s director, said that despite the omissions, the results were consistent with recent censuses.

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“This is notable, given the unprecedented challenges of 2020,” he said in a statement. “But the results also include some limitations — the 2020 census undercounted many of the same population groups we have historically undercounted, and it overcounted others.”

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Terri Ann Lowenthal, a leading expert on the census and consultant to governments and others with a stake in the count, called the results “troubling but not entirely surprising.”

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“Overall, the results are less accurate than in 2010,” she said.

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By the bureau’s estimates, the 2020 tally incorrectly counted 18.8 million residents, double-counting some, wrongly including others and missing others entirely, even as it came extremely close to reaching an accurate count of the overall population

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The estimates released on Thursday — in essence, a statistical adjustment of totals made public last year — are based on an examination of federal records and an extensive survey in which the bureau interviewed residents in some 10,000 census blocks — the smallest unit used in census tabulations. Bureau experts then compared their answers to the actual census results for those blocks.

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