Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas, director of research for the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Sacramento Bee about the possible undercount of Latinos in the 2020 Census. States with large Latino populations including Texas, Florida and Arizona did not gain congressional representation as predicted, raising concerns about the potential undercount of Latino residents. COVID-19 created new obstacles for census outreach, and Latino communities were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. “During the count, it was Latino communities that were having really high rates of infections and deaths, which also definitely impacted the way in which people view the priority of a census,” Dominguez-Villegas said. “When your community is dying, you don’t really care so much about participating in the census.” He noted that the Latino population in California grew by 1.5 million residents between 2010 and 2019. More information about the accuracy of the count in California will be available when further Census Bureau results are released.