Washington's 2020 Census Passes 2010 Milestone

SEATTLE, WA — The 2020 Census says Washington has now passed a key milestone: more Washington households have done the census than did the 2010 census a decade ago. That makes Washington only the second state to have its 2020 census pass the 2010 response.

According to the census, around 2.2 million Washington households have now submitted their census questionnaires. That's an estimated 67.2 percent of the state, making Washington the best responding state on the west coast and the sixth-best responding state in the whole country.

It's good news for the evergreen state, the census count will help determine how much Washington will receive out of $1.5 trillion in federal funding. The census also decides how many congressional seats each state gets.

The Census Bureau has highlighted a few other key data points to show just how well Washington has done so far:

• Seattle is the second-best responding "major city" with 71 percent of households responding. Major cities are the 50 largest cities by population. Among them, only Louisville has Seattle beat.
• The best-responding municipality is Brier, where 85.6 percent of households have filled out questionnaires. The worst is Bingen, with only 13.4 percent.
• The county with the highest response is Clark County, where 71.3 percent of residents have responded. The lowest is Pacific County where just 36 percent have.

Here are several response rates from some of the state's biggest cities and counties:

• Bellevue: 70.6 percent
• Kirkland: 73.5 percent
• Renton: 69.1 percent
• Tacoma: 67.9 percent
• Puyallup: 70.2 percent
• Pierce County: 67.2 percent
• King County: 71.1 percent

There's still plenty of time for anyone who hasn't taken the census to submit their questionnaire and be counted. Normally the census would close at the end of this month, but the pandemic forced the Census Bureau to push the deadline through the end of October. Most homes should have received questionnaires through the mail, but the census can also be taken online at my2020census.gov.

State leaders are urging everyone who has not been counted yet to step forward. Historically, people of color, children, senior citizens, undocumented immigrants, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ community, Native Americans in tribal areas, the homeless and low-income Americans are among the least likely to be accurately counted in the census.

A more accurate count could help struggling communities receive more support from the federal government. When a state is under-counted, it can lose out on all sorts of critical funding for services like hospitals, Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches, summer lunch programs and more.

Learn more about the 2020 Census at the Census Bureau's website here.