Where to get 2010 Census Block data?

It is on the new version of American Factfinder and don't feel bad, even Census Bureau employees are confounded by the new site.

Example for population and housing for Newark, DE:

• Go to http://factfinder2.census.gov

• Choose 'Advanced Search' > 'Show Me All'

Start searching for the theme you're after:

3. Under Topics choose People > Basic Count/Estimate > Population Total and Housing > Basic Count/Estimate > Housing Units - or whatever you're interested in. Your results will show up in the table list in the main window.

   • See your current filter in the 'Your Selections' window in the top left-hand window

4. Click on Geographies, a window for selecting geographies opens. Note if you select a geography where the table above is not available, you'll get a message and your options will reflect what is available at this geographic level.

   • Select a Geographic Type ie. Block Group - 150
   • Select a State
   • Select a County
   • Click from the available geographic unit from the 'Select one or more geographic areas...' and choose Add to your selection
   • Your geography is added to the 'Your Selections' window
   • Close the Select Geographies window.
     • Note if you want to download tables for multiple counties, go through the Geographies window again and you'll see each one added to 'Your Selections'

5. If you want to further filter your results to a race/ethnic group, click Race and Ethnic groups

   • Note if you have chosen a topic that doesn't allow a filter by race/ethnicity, you should clear that from 'Your Selections' window and choose a different topic (or leave it blank)

6. Click from the table list in the main window to add to your download list

   • note these

7. Click the download button and verify your .zip creation and download

8. When your download is finished, open the .zip and see the file ending with _with_ann.csv

   • This is your data that you will load into your database or join to your shapefile
   • Note the GEO.id2 column - this is the BLOCKGROUP ID that will link to the same column in your Blockgroup Shapefile

Here is an image showing how to open the CSV in LibreOffice - ensure the GEO.id2 column is read as 'TEXT' so that leading 0's are kept (and ensure you set up the proper column data type if you import into PostgreSQL)

And lastly the data in LibreOffice, showing that when you do import the data somewhere, discard the second and third columns so you only keep the header and data:

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.html allows you to download census blocks by county.

Update: the TIGER/shapefiles does not have any demographic data - if that's what you are looking for you would need American FactFinder.

They are available on the Census FTP site at http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010BLKPOPHU/