Week 05
Census
Monday, 9/21/26: Census data
Today we discuss the census and introduce the fourth lab, focused on working with census data.
For Wednesday, be sure to read the following (there are also linked on Canvas):
- “Census 2020: For all to count, all must be counted” (Brown 2019)
- “The Republican Plan to Reform the Census Could Put Everyone’s Privacy at Risk” (Elliott 2025) (PDF here // Original article)
- “Trump officials propose sweeping changes to the census that would reshape voting maps” (Lo Wang 2026)
And optionally, skim Jurjevich (2026) about differential privacy in the 2020 census.
Wednesday, 9/23/26: Mostly open lab
We’ll spend ~20 mins discussing the readings; then, open lab.
As an addendum to the stuff you read for class, consider skimming the paper/abstract of Warren and Warren (2025). The authors use geospatial methods to reconstruct the change in political apportionment of states for every decennial census since 1980 and they find that “no more than two House seats and three Electoral College votes would have shifted between political parties in any year since 1980; this would have had no bearing on party control of the House or the outcome of presidential elections.”