It appears that Obama selection of Robert Groves as director of the US Census has gotten Republicans worried:

Republicans expressed alarm because of one of Mr. Groves’s specialties, statistical sampling — roughly speaking, the process of extrapolating from the numbers of people actually counted to arrive at estimates of those uncounted and, presumably, arriving at a realistic total.

If minorities, immigrants, the poor and the homeless are those most likely to be missed in an actual head count, and if political stereotypes hold true, then statistical sampling would presumably benefit the Democrats.

First, let me note here that the reporter does not have a clue: As a matter of settled law, the Supreme Court ruled that you cannot use a statistical sampling, but instead must use an actual count in Department of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives in 1999, so this is a non-issue.

What is not a non issue is that statistical sampling can find people and places that have been under-sampled, and can so create a more accurate census, and a more accurate census is probably a bad thing^™ for Republicans, because white males tend to be the easy folks to count.

The ‘Phants don’t oppose him because he will, “Politicize the Census,” they oppose him because he will do the best job possible within his power.

They don’t want someone to do a good job, they want someone to do a piss poor job.