Just like they may have accidentally made it harder for their own voters to vote, they may have cheated themselves out some new House seats:
Everyone knew Hispanics were at risk of being undercounted in the 2020 Census, because the Trump administration gave every indication of wanting them undercounted. The administration’s hard-line anti-immigrant policies, after all, extended to the census. As commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross attempted to get a citizenship question added to the survey, but the effort was blocked by the Supreme Court. Still, election-data experts and advocacy groups warned that no matter what the outcome, the battle would have a chilling effect on response rates among Hispanics.
The reapportionment numbers released this week seemed to confirm this fear. To be sure, nationally, census counts came in remarkably close to pre-census predictions. (Those predictions were made using birth and death records, data on international migration and Medicare records.) The total count, nearly 332 million, exceeded pre-census estimates by a mere 0.7 percent. That suggests a high degree of accuracy, especially considering the difficulties of counting under pandemic conditions. But the degree of accuracy was not the same everywhere. The greatest underperformance, relative to projections, occurred in three Sun Belt states — Texas, Florida and Arizona — where head counts fell short of projections by 177,000, 163,000 and 262,000, respectively. These three states also have some of the highest proportions of Hispanics in the country: 40 percent in Texas, 26 percent in Florida and 32 percent in Arizona.
Given that two of those states, Texas and Florida, are red and Arizona is a closely divided purple state, Republicans did not do themselves any favors: Their actions may have suppressed census responses in places where they would benefit from more seats in Congress.
In the moment it was more important for them to pander to their racists than it was to secure those House seats. Seems short-sighted to me but the magical Dear Leader knows best so …