Their recommendation is expected to go to the acting director of the bureau in about two weeks. The issue has provoked spirited political debate. Experts generally agree that poor people and minorities were more likely to be missed by census takers, and middle-class whites more likely to be counted twice. That generally means that adjusting with sampling would add more poor and minority voters, who are likely Democrats, to the tally, and subtract suburban whites who normally vote Republican. For that reason, President George W. Bush and other Republicans tend to favor using only the traditional head count.
Democrats tend to favor using sampling to reach what they consider to be a more accurate figure.
The official basic head count, which by law is used for congressional redistricting, will cost Michigan one of its 16 congressional seats after 2002 as district boundaries are redrawn. Sarpolus said the state won't get its lost seat back even if the Census Bureau uses sampling to adjust figures upward and the undercount is as big as last time. We'd like to have our undercount included, but nobody else's. But if everybody's undercount was tallied, Michigan would probably lose more than it did. Another reason the undercount question may not loom as important in Detroit this time around, experts agree, is that the Census Bureau did a better job of finding people than in 1990.