new rule

SACRAMENTO — More than a quarter of registered voters in California are unsure if they will fill out the upcoming 2030 Census, largely due to privacy concerns, according to a new poll.

The survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies showed 72% of voters said their household is certain to fill out the census. Of the 28% who expressed reluctance, 16% said they will “probably” fill it out; 5% said there is a 50-50 chance they would; 3% said they probably or certainly will not; and 4% were unsure.

The once-per-decade national population count is used to reapportion the U.S. House of Representatives’ 435 seats among the states. It is also used to determine federal funding for schools, healthcare, transportation and other public services.

By law, all responses to the national Census are kept confidential, a fact that was mentioned by pollsters when they asked respondents about the topic.

“We’re in a moment where there are a lot of reasons to be distrustful and a lot of concerns,” said Eric Schickler, co-director of the IGS Poll. “But the census, people have been filling that out their whole adult lives, so to see this level of concern and then that spill over into willingness to respond was certainly bracing.”

Younger voters and voters of color were more likely to express reluctance about completing the census. Fewer than half, 46%, of those under the age of 30 said they would definitely fill out the census. The same was said by about two-thirds of Black (68%) and Latino (65%) voters, as well as voters between the ages of 30 and 39 (63%). Just 57% of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters were certain they would participate.

Half of voters said they were either “very” or “somewhat confident” that their household’s census responses would be kept private, while 43% were “not too” or “not at all confident” and the remainder unsure.

“These findings are a warning, and we still have time to act. Doubt about confidentiality is an undercount in the making,” said Ditas Katague, who directed California’s Census 2020 outreach. She added that “protections are strong, but a law people don’t trust protects no one. That infrastructure has to be built now, not in 2029.”

The Trump administration has proposed new rules for the 2030 Census that would exclude many noncitizen residents from political apportionment and remove questions about race, ethnicity and sexual orientation from the survey.

The president previously moved to exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment and include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, but the effort was abandoned when he left office.

“Hearing about, do noncitizens get counted, or hearing discussion about the intensified immigration enforcement, all of that kind of creates an atmosphere where a lot of people are concerned about how their responses would be treated,” Schickler said. Especially “if they have family members or are themselves non-citizens.”

With a stagnant population, California is expected to lose as many as four congressional seats after the 2030 Census, according to the nonpartisan American Redistricting Project, while fast-growing Texas and Florida could gain four and two seats, respectively.

If enacted, Trump’s proposed rule to exclude undocumented immigrants and others without permanent residency, including people with Temporary Protected Status, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, refugees, asylum seekers, could further diminish congressional representation for California and other states, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center report.

The Golden State previously lost one congressional seat following the 2020 Census.

The poll surveyed 2,787 registered voters in California from Oct. 19-25, online in English and Spanish, and has an estimated margin of error of about 2.5 percentage points in either direction.

Funding for the poll was provided in part by the Los Angeles Times and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.