Next year’s census could be pivotal for North Carolina, with the possibility of the Tar Heel State picking up an additional congressional seat.

However, some parts of the population could get missed in that national survey, which helps determine the allocation of congressional seats and federal spending.

Rebecca Tippett, director of Carolina Demography at UNC Chapel Hill, says there are certain groups that typically are harder to count.

“In 2010, for example, the age group least likely to be counted was children under five. In part because people didn't necessarily know that you're supposed to count children under five,” she said.

Those who live off the grid or struggle with English can be hard to track down or interview, Tippett said. Additionally, it can be hard to convince those who distrust what the government may do with their personal information to participate, she said.

One group that matches a lot of these categories: the Latinx population.

In North Carolina, advocates for the Latinx and immigrant communities say they are hoping to boost participation by working with Spanish media and other groups to help keep people engaged and informed.

“We're trying really hard to reach out to the immigrant community across the state so they can trust the census and know that their information will be kept secret and private,” said Moises Serrano, political director at El Pueblo, a Raleigh-based organization.

Serrano said the efforts to rev up participation were complicated earlier this year when the Trump administration tried - unsuccessfully - to add a citizenship question to the census.

“It has sowed a bunch of distrust and fear in the Latinx community that we as an organization are currently trying to repair,” Serrano said. "There's still a lot of misinformation."

So, can they successfully mitigate an undercount?

Come next year, Tippett said, expect about one out of nine North Carolina residents to identify as Latino or Hispanic.

“In some of our communities, that's 1-in-5,” she said. “And that's not just in urban areas. Many of our rural communities - so Sampson County, Duplin County - have very large Latino populations.”

The 2020 survey is now just months away.

Find out more about hard-to-count North Carolina communities here.