Thread by @PeterKGeoghegan

I *really* shouldn't spend my Sunday mornings doing this but as a journalist whose job is to dig into things decided to take a look at these numbers... (v short thread)

So 840 people aged 101+. Sounds like a lot, yeah?

https://twitter.com/PhillyGOP/status/1325175978641874947

There were 13,170 centenarians in UK in 2018 according to ONS. Pennsylvania population is c12m, roughly 5 times UK's. So would expect around 2,500 people aged 101+ in PA. Is it a huge surprise that c. a third of these voted?

But 'lived through Civil war' and 'born in 1800s' is just 'wow', right?

Well no. It's is literally laid out in GOP link:

"The reason some birth dates will display as 1/1/1800 is due to confidentiality reasons"
data.pa.gov/Government-Eff…

This stuff isn't even complicated. It just depends on people sharing it without even spending a minute looking at the data supplied or asking *any* even vaguely critical questions.

Grr PA's pop is roughly a fifth of the UK's, obvs.