State and County-Level Response Rates – Week ending March 29

  North Carolina: Census 2020 Real-Time Response Rates – Week ending March 29 (.pdf)

  View All County-Level Response Rates – Week ending March 29

Key takeaways for week ending March 29

1. North Carolina is currently among the bottom fifteen states in the nation for Census response: As of March 30th, North Carolina is ranked 39 out of 50 states and DC. 30% of households in North Carolina have now responded to the Census, compared to 33% nationally.
2. North Carolina households continue to lag in online responses: 25% of North Carolina households responded online versus 29% of households nationally. This gap has increased from last week.
3. Four of the top five highest responding counties are in either the Triangle or Charlotte metro regions – Orange, Union, Wake, Chatham.
4. The lowest-response counties primarily located in Western North Carolina – This includes Graham, Jackson, Avery, and Swain counties. Household internet access tends to be lower in this region of the state.
5. There is a widening gap between NC’s response rate and the national average. North Carolina lags the national response rate by 3.1 percentage points, a larger gap than last week (2.6 percentage points).
6. Census tracts with the largest minority population (50% or higher) are lagging behind the state average: Just 27% of households in these census tracts have responded to the Census — three percentage points lower than the state average.
7. The largest disparity in response rates exists between households with low internet access and high access. 35% of households in tracts with the highest internet access have responded to the 2020 Census versus 27% of households in tracts with the lowest internet access.
8. Census tracts with the large immigrant populations (5.7% or higher foreign-born residents) had the highest response rates: Response rates were highest (31.1% average) in tracts where 5.7% to 9.8% of the population was foreign-born; census tracts with the highest concentration of foreign-born residents (9.8% or higher) had the second highest average self-response rates (30.8%).

Last updated: 3.31.20