President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this month that he had ordered the development of a new Census, and one that would unconstitutionally exclude undocumented immigrants, could end up, at best, having “only limited partisan effects,” and at worst, backfire hard on Republicans ahead of the 2026 elections, two researchers argued Wednesday.
Trump insutructed the Department of Commerce to develop the new Census based in large part on “information gained from the presidential election of 2024,” an announcement that some experts interpreted as calling for a mid-cycle Census, ordinarily held every ten years.
But the announcement, made amid Trump’s ploy to bolster GOP numbers in Congress through mid-cycle redistricting efforts in Texas and Indiana, at worst could hurt Republicans come 2026, argued researchers Chirstopher Kenny and Tyler Simko in an op-ed published in The Hill Wednesday.
“Many of the hardest-to-reach households are in rural areas, which often lean Republican,” the op-ed reads. “Sacrificing data quality through a rushed census would likely undercount these rural populations.”
Launching a mid-cycle Census – a process that involves hundreds of thousands of volunteer workers that have to be trained – would likely hurt rural communities, which often lean Republican, far more than their urban counterparts, which typically skew Democratic.
The two researchers ran a simulation of how a mid-cycle Census may pan out using data from the American Community Survey, the results of which found that, at best, excluding undocumented immigrants would see the loss of a total of seven House seats; four in California, two in Texas and one in New York, though it’s unclear whether any particular party would benefit.
Furthermore, the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from the mid-cycle Census would also see rural communities’ representation in Congress weaken, and significantly so.
“Comparatively, the relative political power of suburban areas, where fewer undocumented people tend to live compared to urban and rural areas, would increase,” the op-ed reads.
“If this choice to count only citizens spreads to impact how funds are distributed, these areas, alongside urban areas – many of which are conservative, rural or both – are likely to suffer.”