As of Tuesday, 98 percent of the 47 million households that had failed to return their census questionnaires had been contacted by a census worker. The New York Times reports that metropolitan New York was among the regions with the lowest completion rates, with 94 percent of questionnaires turned in; an area in Mississippi was the least complete local census office, with about 88 percent, Robert M. Groves, the Census Bureau director, said in an interview. Despite fears of hostility toward the federal government, incidents involving census workers have been relatively few. Since April, in the course of knocking on 47 million doors an average of two times, the bureau has logged 430 on-the-job incidents against enumerators, including 13 cases where shots were fired (one man was killed in Baltimore) and 139 cases where a weapon was pulled. Ten workers were robbed, one was bitten by a duck and another by a rooster.

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