2020 Census Redistricting Data is Released

Today at 1 pm, the U.S. Census Bureau released the PL94–171 files — better known as the Redistricting data. It’s quite literally the building blocks of redistricting in the U.S. at the state, county, and local levels. The delay in the release of the data has created a time crunch for mapmakers across the country to make their plans quickly as the timeline starts ticking for many jurisdictions. On the DistrictBuilder team, we’ve been busy at work planning and preparing for this day.

We’ve made it as seamless as possible for DistrictBuilder users to work with the new data. First, we’re working on loading the 2020 data into DistrictBuilder in batches, starting today, and over the next few days, you’ll see data for more states (down to the block level!) become available. In addition, all of this data is going to come with an added bonus — election results from 2016 and 2020, thanks to VEST. Second, if you already created a plan, you can easily convert your plan to its 2020 equivalent and see the new metrics in a matter of seconds. Finally, coinciding with the 2020 Census data release, we’ve launched a bunch of exciting new features keeping in line with our goal of making redistricting as easy and user-friendly as possible. New features include a majority-minority district viewer, expandable demographics viewer (and the ability to pin different demographic categories), as well as a Community Maps feature to explore maps made by other DistrictBuilder users.

Get started redrawing the map on redistricting today. Have specific questions about redistricting, data, or features in a particular place? Let us know.