Federal Government’s Bungled Census Bad News for Red States. Here’s Why.

If a politician from Florida decides to run for president in 2024, his (or her) home state will be short two votes in the Electoral College, and when the new session of the U.S. House of Representatives convenes in January 2023, Florida will be missing two congressional seats to which it is entitled.

Why? Because according to a post-2020 census survey, the U.S. Census Bureau significantly undercounted the population of Florida, as well as Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. At the same time, it overcounted the population of eight states, all but one of which is a blue state.

The 2020 errors were discovered when the Census Bureau interviewed a large number of households across the country and compared the answers it got to the original census responses in 2020. In addition to undercounting six states, the survey showed that the Bureau overcounted the population of Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Utah.

Funny coincidence—the Census made its largest overcount percentage error in President Joe Biden’s tiny home state of Delaware, which was overcounted by 5.45%. But Rhode Island and Minnesota were also overcounted by 5.05% and 3.84%, respectively, which allowed each of them to keep a congressional seat to which they are not entitled.

Minnesota, according to the original census report, would have lost a congressional seat during reapportionment if it had 26 fewer residents; the survey shows the state was overcounted by 216,971 individuals. Similarly, Rhode Island would have lost a seat if the Census Bureau had counted 19,000 fewer residents. It turns out that the state was overcounted by more than 55,000 individuals.