The 2020 census conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theory time! This one is actually mostly true.

Population counts from the census are used to determine how many electoral votes each state gets. In 2020, there were some weird results. Turns out those were mistakes. The Census Bureau even admitted it a couple years ago. In terms of electoral votes, the net impact of the mistakes was:

• -2 EVs for FL
• -1 EV for TX
• +1 EV for MN
• +1 EV for RI
• +1 EV for CO

Coincidentally, all the mistakes favored blue states. 3 more electoral votes for blue states, and 3 fewer for red states.

This means that on election night, if Kamala wins between 269 and 272 electoral votes, the census miscount altered the result of the election. A win/tie would instead turn into a loss/tie! According to Nate Silver's latest model, there's about a 3% chance that will happen.

The "conspiracy" part depends on whether this was intentional. There's no evidence of an actual conspiracy, of course. Regardless, it is true that this "mistake" from the census gives a nice little boost to the Democrats.

Another caveat is that if the electoral vote distribution was different, the candidates might be campaigning differently, and there might not be a 3% chance of these specific situations happening. But it still wouldn't be 0%!