The pandemic was and is horrible, but it didn't take enough lives above the expected death rate to really have an appreciable impact on census data. (I am not a COVID denialist, we had more deaths than expected rates, it is worse than the flu etc. etc.)
Unless you are talking about out-migration from big cities to small cities, but then again I think it could be just as illogical to say "lets base it off of immediate post-pandemic numbers" as I would best a good many people will move _back_ to the big cities.
That is the risk of a point-in-time count. So many external factors. But generally they all cancel one another out, and each point-in-time count has similar but unique circumstances that in the aggregate could have an impact. Just the way these counts are.
I am explicitly concerned about the point in time nature. I am glad you pointed out all of the migration anomalies, as well as the future possibility for more.
Edit: also I would not balk at 500k deaths. There will be more to come as well. That is a significant portion of the voting age and likely voter populations.
Especially since we are talking 10-year increments here, for the pandemic to have a real impact on census stuff, it would have to have killed many people _who were not otherwise going to die over the next decade_. Most likely, we front-loaded a lot of these expected deaths to the early part of the decade. That is to say, at some point in the next 10 years the census will be an accurate representation of living voting-age people in the USA.
I didn't balk at 500k deaths. In fact, I tried to make sure that nobody would accuse me of downplaying the deaths/impact of the pandemic.
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It seems absolutely wild to me that we are using pre pandemic population counts to apportion seats.
The pandemic was and is horrible, but it didn't take enough lives above the expected death rate to really have an appreciable impact on census data. (I am not a COVID denialist, we had more deaths than expected rates, it is worse than the flu etc. etc.)
Unless you are talking about out-migration from big cities to small cities, but then again I think it could be just as illogical to say "lets base it off of immediate post-pandemic numbers" as I would best a good many people will move _back_ to the big cities.
That is the risk of a point-in-time count. So many external factors. But generally they all cancel one another out, and each point-in-time count has similar but unique circumstances that in the aggregate could have an impact. Just the way these counts are.
There's more to it, I had a census worker knocking on my door mid pandemic and nobody answered as they went door to door.
The pandemic itself impacted the ability to DO the survey, while also happening when certain areas experienced great movements of their populations.
I am explicitly concerned about the point in time nature. I am glad you pointed out all of the migration anomalies, as well as the future possibility for more.
Edit: also I would not balk at 500k deaths. There will be more to come as well. That is a significant portion of the voting age and likely voter populations.
Especially since we are talking 10-year increments here, for the pandemic to have a real impact on census stuff, it would have to have killed many people _who were not otherwise going to die over the next decade_. Most likely, we front-loaded a lot of these expected deaths to the early part of the decade. That is to say, at some point in the next 10 years the census will be an accurate representation of living voting-age people in the USA.
I didn't balk at 500k deaths. In fact, I tried to make sure that nobody would accuse me of downplaying the deaths/impact of the pandemic.
For the next 10 years
At least it is better than the UK. IIRC they completely stopped updating their seats.