Democrats, forget the last election. Winning future ones might be about to get even harder. And it’s got nothing to do with the border or inflation or trans rights or Trump and everything to do with the numbers on this spreadsheet.
They reveal how many Americans pack up their things and move from one state to another. It’s a lot, more than seven million people in 2023. Now, my colleague Binyamin Appelbaum, he writes about the economy for The New York Times.
He went through this whole spreadsheet scouring two decades’ worth of data, and he found something that should strike fear into every Democrat. Millions of people have moved out of California, New York, Illinois and other blue states. And they’re moving to Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, red ones.
Some are drawn by new manufacturing jobs. Others are pulled by finance and tech hubs. But it’s mostly teachers, police officers, dentists, people who just want a more affordable quality of life.
People also move to blue states, of course, but in smaller numbers. In fact, over the last 20 years, nine million more people migrated from blue to red than in the other direction. And Democrats, this is bad news for you.
Why? Because the size of a state’s population determines how many Electoral College votes it receives. The next national census takes place in 2030.
And assuming the migration flows on this spreadsheet continue until then, look what happens. California loses four votes, New York loses three, Illinois loses two, and other blue states like Minnesota, Oregon and Rhode Island all lose a vote. And they go, just like the people, to those red states.
In total, this reallocation could cost Democrats 12 Electoral College votes. And don’t forget, this would be locked in for a decade, until the next census. So if your 2032 candidate wins exactly the same number of states as Kamala Harris just did, they won’t get 226 votes; they’ll only get 214.
Democrats have been dreaming for decades that these population shifts would help turn red states purple. Instead, Texas and Florida have simply become bigger red states. Now, look, a lot could change before the next census, in five years.
But blue states are going to have to change first. People still want to live in California and New York, but the cost of living must come down. If the Democratic governors of these states want to avoid a decade of electoral oblivion, they have one job: make their states places people can afford to stay.
