Where a citizenship question could cause the census to miss millions of Hispanics & why it's a big

[Celerity]

deal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/06/where-citizenship-question-could-cause-census-miss-millions-hispanics-why-thats-big-deal/?utm_term=.328de9848965

The Supreme Court is expected to decide in coming weeks whether next year’s decennial census will include a new and controversial question on citizenship added by the Trump administration. The question is already being asked each year of a small fraction of the nation’s population in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Hispanics with no citizenship answer on the 2017 American Community Survey


In the latest ACS, in 2017, the citizenship question went unanswered by about 1 in 12 Hispanics, a far higher rate than that of whites. Where these non-responses occurred can tell us where millions of Hispanics would probably be missed if the same question were added to the 2020 Census. Hispanics from Mexico and Central America, areas targeted by the Trump administration’s immigration policies, were most likely to skip the citizenship question, so their neighborhoods would be most affected by the undercount.

The question is simple: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”

But those words would lead to a 2020 undercount of 6 million Hispanics, or about 12 percent of the Hispanic population, according to a study published this spring by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. “It’s just a really simple experiment where individuals are receiving a census form that looks remarkably similar to what people actually receive in 2020,” said Bryce Dietrich, a Shorenstein research fellow. “And half the time that form includes a question about household members’ citizenship, and in the other half of the time the question is not present.”

The Washington Post worked with Dietrich to estimate where the Hispanic undercount, as a result of the citizenship question, would have the biggest impact, distributing it by state using the citizenship non-response data for Hispanics in the ACS. For example, California accounted for 28 percent of the nation’s unanswered ACS citizenship questions, so it was assigned that share of Shorenstein’s estimate of the overall Hispanic 2020 undercount.

Hispanic undercount and its share of the total state population


snip


It could give Red States a NET PLUS FOUR Electoral College votes (versus an accurate and fair count), not to mention (and related, obviously) give Rethugs a net 4 more seats in the US House and maybe more, due to gerrymandering, PLUS give them gains in State and local assemblies as well. grrrrrrrrrr