New Census director has faith in quality of 2020 numbers

The new U.S. Census Bureau director said Monday that he is listening to the concerns of data users and policymakers, and the agency is making permanent community outreach efforts, in an effort to restore any trust that was lost following attempts by the Trump administration to politicize the nation’s 2020 head count.

Despite those attempts and obstacles created by the pandemic, the Census Bureau did its job and the numbers used to determine political power and allocate federal funding “are quality products, and they are fit for the purpose they were intended,” Robert Santos said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I have high confidence and I’ve been incredibly pleased with the professionalism of the career staff at the Census Bureau, the job that they’ve done, and their dedication to the mission, the Constitution and the rule of law,” Santos said. “They were doing their due diligence and they made sure they did the job that needed to be done to get the 2020 census done, despite all the obstacles.”

The Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form, which opponents feared may have suppressed participation from immigrant groups.

The Trump administration also named an unusually high number of political appointees to the bureau, and it tried to end the head count early last October, after its schedule had been adjusted for the pandemic, in what opponents said was an effort to release the numbers used for divvying up congressional seats while President Donald Trump was still in office.

Data from the once-a-decade head count also are used for drawing political districts and helping allocate $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year.

The Urban Institute think tank last year estimated that 1.6 million people were missed in the 2020 census, with people of color, renters, noncitizens, children and people living in Texas most likely to be undercounted. In 2019, Santos co-authored an Urban Institute report that said African Americans could be undercounted nationally by 3.6 percent and Hispanics could be undercounted by 3.5 percent, in worst-case scenarios in the 2020 census.

Next month, the Census Bureau plans to release a report card showing how good a job it did of counting different populations.