After every census, the U.S. Census Bureau reports how well it did at counting every person in the country. In 2020, as in past years, the census didn’t get a completely accurate count, according to the bureau’s own reporting. The official census number reported more non-Hispanic whites and people of Asian backgrounds in the U.S. than there actually were. And it reported too few Black, Hispanic and Native American people who live on reservations.
The Conversation U.S. asked Aggie Yellow Horse, a sociologist and demographer at Arizona State University, to explain why, and how, the census misses people, and how it’s possible to assess who wasn’t counted.
1. Who gets missed in the census?
The people most commonly missed are those with low income, people who rent or don’t have homes at all, people who live in rural areas and people who don’t speak or read English well. Often, these are people of color – Black Americans; Indigenous peoples; or people of Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander backgrounds.
Because of their living situations, these people can be hard for census takers to track down in the first place. And they may be more reluctant to participate because of concerns about confidentiality, fear of repercussions and distrust of government.
Nevertheless, the U.S. Census Bureau tries to count everyone, aiming targeted public relations campaigns at specific communities to encourage members to participate. In addition, Census Bureau employees knock on doors in person across the country, trying to follow up with those who did not respond to mailings, announcements and events.
However, the pandemic made that process more difficult for the 2020 census, both by making people uncomfortable with in-person visits and by shortening the timeline for collecting the data.
2. Who got missed?
The official estimates show that the 2020 census was really very accurate, capturing 99.8% of the nation’s residents overall. But the census missed counting 3.3% of Black Americans, 5.6% of American Indians or Alaskan Natives who live on reservations and 5% of people of Hispanic or Latino origin. This could mean missing about 1.4 million Black Americans; 49,000 American Indians or Alaskan Natives who live on reservations; and 3.3 million people of Hispanic or Latino origin.
This performance is much worse than in the previous two censuses, when smaller proportions of those populations were missed.
The 2020 census also counted 1.64% more non-Hispanic whites than there actually are in the country. For example, college students could have been counted twice – at their college residence and at their parents’ home.
3. How can they count the people who were missed?
It can be puzzling to understand how the Census Bureau can know how many people it missed. Efforts for measuring census accuracy started in 1940. Census officials use two methods.
First, the Census Bureau uses demographic analysis to create an estimate of the population. That means the bureau calculates how many people might be added to the population counts, through birth registrations and immigration records, and how many people might be removed from them, through death record or emigration reports. Comparing that estimate with the actual count can reveal an overall scale of how many people the census missed.
As a second measure, the Census Bureau runs what it calls a “ post-enumeration survey,” taken after the initial census data is collected. The survey is conducted independent of the census and randomly sent to a small group of households from census blocks in each state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The results of that survey are compared with the census results for those households and can reveal how many people were missed, or if some people were counted twice or counted in the wrong place.
4. Can the Census Bureau fix its data?
The Census Bureau has determined that its 2020 data is not accurate and has measured the amount of that inaccuracy. But in 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that the bureau cannot adjust the numbers it sent to Congress and the states for the purpose of allocating seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and, therefore, Electoral College votes. That’s because federal law bars the use of statistical sampling in apportionment decisions and requires those changes to be made only on the basis of how many people were actually counted. That means political representation in Congress may not accurately reflect the constituencies the representatives serve.
But the numbers can be adjusted when used to divide up federal funding for essential services in communities around the nation. More than US$675 billion a year is provided to tribal, state and local governments proportionally according to their population numbers.
However, that adjustment happens only if tribal, state or local officials ask for it. The Census Bureau’s Count Question Resolution program can correct 2020 census data until June 2023. After the 2010 census, the program received requests from 1,180 governments, of out about 39,000 nationwide. As a result, about 2,700 people were newly added to the census count, and about 48,000 household addresses were corrected.
This approach can lessen the harm done to communities where the census count missed people. But it doesn’t prevent the Census Bureau from missing them – or others – in the next census.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Click here to read the original article.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.