Coronavirus and the 2020 census
It’s been awhile since I posted anything, which has been due to my being stretched thin at my job (on top of trying to survive a pandemic). In my work at Civis Analytics, I’ve been monitoring the progress of the census, which determines how federal funding and congressional seats are apportioned to the different states.
In the best of times, the census is a challenging logistical operation to execute well. In 2020, the Trump administration is actively trying to sabotage the count. On top of that, the Covid-19 crisis (not unrelated to the actions of the administration) further threatens the count because it complicates in-person enumeration (i.e. census workers going to households that have not self-responded to the census to record peoples’ information). In a pandemic, people are less likely to open their doors to speak with census workers, and census workers going door-to-door are potential vectors for spreading a virus.
As part of my work, I analyzed the Census 2020 self-response rates together with Covid-19 case-load data to identify hotspots that still required substantial in-person enumeration. These areas pose a huge challenge to getting everyone counted properly. This work got mentioned in a New York Times article on August 24, 2020. It featured a map based on my analysis!
The small mention of Civis Analytics = me! Source: New York Times
This article then got retweeted by President Barack Obama himself! It’s kind of depressing how badly Census 2020 is going, and our best hope for now is to raise awareness of the issue.
A civic-minded President who tweets in grammatically-correct sentences.
If you haven’t taken the census yet, it is incredibly easy to do so online. Our democracy depends on it.