Voter Migration and What it Means to Your Family

With November approaching fast, it would pay to reread this piece I wrote on June 5, 2018 highlighting some knowledge shared by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox on voter migration.

Who needs to redraw state lines when states can be gutted from the inside out? That’s exactly what’s happening across the country to blue states that have abused their power of taxation for far too long. As the story goes, it’s true that demographics favor Democrats but dig a little deeper and you see that it’s geography that favors Republicans.

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Look at the mass exodus from blue states such as California and the migration into states such as Texas, Arizona, and Tennessee or East-Cali as I like to call them. Or the blue states of New England and New York that consider Florida and the Carolinas home away from home.

Red states are the magnets of state migration, and as such will continue to weaken blue states. And don’t expect the mass influx into Texas, by example, to turn it into a blue state. It’s not going to happen.

Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox explain at newgeography.com:

The geography, on the other hand, favors Republicans. Although the election was won tactically in the Midwest, Trump’s largest margin of victory came from red states, many with swelling populations, such as Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Arizona, and the Carolinas.

A third shift—the toughest to predict the political impact of—could be the most consequential: the movement within metropolitan areas. The core base of the Democratic Party is built around the urban core, particularly in large cities; that of the GOP is located in more rural areas. Yet the most recent census data suggests growth in both of these areas have mostly stopped, while the big gains now are in suburbs and smaller cities, including some in the now Republican-leaning Midwest.

Over the past two decades, the non-Hispanic white population has declined from 76 percent of the population to 63. By 2030, according to Census Bureau projections, that percentage could fall to 56.

This is not good news for today’s Republican Party, which counts heavily on the votes of non-Hispanic whites. These voters, motivated in part by their diminishing share of the population and political pies, supported Trump over Clinton by 21 percentage points. Trump did somewhat better with black and Hispanic voters than his more genteel predecessor Mitt Romney. Still, Trump lost Hispanic, African-American, and Asian voters by wide margins—winning less than 1 in 3 Hispanic voters and less than 1 in 10 black voters.

In elections so far, millennials—who will be the country’s biggest voting bloc by 2024—also have tilted decisively to the Democrats. Still, support for Trump and the GOP has been edging up, particularly among white millennials, since the 2016 election.

Many millennials, faced with dismal prospects for higher wages and steady work and, in some areas, insurmountable barriers to home ownership, are embracing socialistic policies. High rents have added to the appeal of the redistributionist agenda of what the 538 website has called a Democratic version of the “tea party”—free college, rent control and subsidies, and guaranteed jobs. This approach, as opposed to Clintonian moderation, increasingly dominates Democratic politics, a trend reaffirmed in the recent primary elections across the country.

Ironically, the very forces, such as high housing prices, rents, and limited job opportunities are driving millennials, and minorities, to the very places that have served as bulwarks of conservatism, including Trump-friendly metros such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Nashville, and Indianapolis.

The trajectory of migration works largely against the Democrats. In a recent analysis for Chief Executive magazine we found that while blue regions like San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Denver, and Portland enjoyed the largest increase of people 20-29. But when people start entering their thirties—the fastest growing demographic cohort—Austin, San Antonio, Tampa, Orlando, and Raleigh take the lead. For people in their forties, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Florida cities are preferred. Among boomers—second only to millennials in numbers—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Jose, Boston, and San Francisco lose out to lower-cost Sunbelt metros including Phoenix, Austin, Las Vegas, Orlando, and Tampa.

The winners in the migration sweepstakes, notably among those approaching their child-bearing and house-buying years—are states that traditionally lean red: Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, and Utah. Due also to higher birth rates, these states and their metro regions are growing far faster than their blue rivals, where Trump was generally trounced. New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut have long experienced sub-par growth; New York is barely growing at all. Most importantly, California, which once led the nation in population growth, is decidedly slowing down with growth last year below the national average as a result of strong domestic out-migration, faltering immigration, and a lower-than-average birth rate.

These numbers will alter the nation’s political balance. In the coming decade, congressional seats, and Electoral College votes, will continue to move to red states. Since 2000, the number of congressional seats has grown by two in both Texas and Florida while declining by two in New York and Ohio. The 2010 census added no congressional seats for California—for the first time since 1920.

E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.