Sen. Harding, Senate GOP: CT Census Error Raises Questions

CENSUS GOOFS ON COUNT

Agency’s error misrepresented Connecticut’s gains in 2021, 2022

BY PAUL HUGHES
REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

HARTFORD — A processing error by the U.S. Census Bureau produced a much ballyhooed but hugely inaccurate estimate of Connecticut’s population gains from other states in 2022.

The Census Bureau issued a headline-making statistic last November that indicated Connecticut saw a net influx of nearly 57,000 people moving here from other states between 2021 and 2022. The reported increase represented one of the greatest population gains in many years.

That estimate was way off, however, and it is more likely that closer to 13,000 people left here for other states.

Despite that swing, another estimate indicates the overall state population did increase by more than 11,000 people since 2020.

The Census Bureau acknowledged its mistake in a June 20 advisory that said data users should not use that estimate from the 2022 American Community Survey. The acknowledgment received less notice than the announcement of the original estimate.

The data-processing error stemmed from the 2022 federal approval of the state government’s request to recognize Connecticut’s nine planning regions as the statistical equivalent of counties for the purpose of tabulating and publishing future census data. The administration of then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy made the request in 2017.

POPULATION: Mistake a letdown, Lamont says

The Census Bureau said respondents reporting a Connecticut county as their residence in 2021 were systematically excluded from the donor pool for allocating missing or inconsistent data. The mistake led to an overestimation of the number of people moving to Connecticut from other states, and underestimations of the number of people moving within Connecticut and the number of movers from Connecticut to other states.

Gov. Ned Lamont said Tuesday it was a letdown to learn the American Community Survey data was flawed, but he noted numbers from the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program indicated an overall population gain between July 2022 and July 2023.

For months, Lamont had been hailing the initially reported estimate of a net gain of nearly 57,000 new residents from other states in 2022 as a sign of a turnaround, including in his 2024 State of the State Address when he said, “Unlike our neighboring states which are losing population, Connecticut has gained population over the last few years.”

Senate Minority Leader Stephen G. Harding, R-Brookfield, and the three ranking Republican senators on the Appropriations, Finance, Revenue and Bonding, and Transportation committees sought to turn the tables Tuesday on Lamont and the Democrats after they had been touting the flawed estimate for months.

The four Republicans cited a report on the population-boom-turned-bust published Tuesday by Connecticut Inside Investigator, a nonprofit digital news outlet launched in 2022 by the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Hartford.

In a joint statement, Harding and Sens. Eric C. Berthel, R-Watertown, Henri Martin, R-Bristol, and Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, questioned whether Democrats would dispute or deny the report, and asked if Democrats could say how the flawed census data would affect the state’s ability to secure federal funding tied to population counts.

Lamont pointed to state data from the Population Estimates Program the Census Bureau released after its June 20 advisory that indicated Connecticut added population between July 2022 and July 2023.

This estimate indicated the state added 8,470 residents during the 12-month period that ended July 1 due to international migration, plus the number of births exceeding the number of deaths.

“Some of the naysayers like to leave out (international) immigration for some reason,” Lamont said. “If you include immigration, we still have people moving into the state, and I have got to do everything I can to make this state a place where people want to move.”

He said he and the Democrats were reacting to the originally reported population data the Census Bureau has acknowledged is flawed eight months after its publication.