Mass exodus: Americans flee high-tax blue states for red freedom

Hedge fund manager and investor Ray Dalio thinks a new American civil war is possible. He gives it a 35% or 40% chance of happening. But it won’t be a shooting war, he says. Instead, it will manifest itself in geographical relocation. “People move to different states that are more aligned with what they want, and they don’t follow the decisions of federal authorities of the opposite political persuasion,” Dalio told the Financial Times.

However likely you believe Dalio’s prediction to be, when it comes to political beliefs, Americans do seem to be letting their U-Hauls do their talking. It’s been a truism for decades now: Americans are fleeing states intransigent in their progressivism and relocating to states more protective of freedom, economic and otherwise. While a direct transference from blue to red is difficult to prove, it is undeniable that the blue states are shrinking and red states are burgeoning.

For every conservative fleeing Chicago or New York for economic freedom or safer streets in Nashville or Cape Coral, Florida, a liberal heads south to escape the snow.

The latest Census Bureau statistics underline the point. Five of the top 10 fastest-growing states by percentage from July 2022 to July 2023 were solid conservative states: South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Idaho, and North Carolina. Include in that number Tennessee and Utah, also among the top 10, and Americans’ movement is definitely red-tinged.

As for where these domestic refugees are from, that’s also easy. They’re leaving New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.

The largest population loser, though, is that big, beautiful state out on the Left Coast: California. Big companies fleeing the coast make headlines, and Tesla’s relocation to Texas is only the latest splash in what has become a splash pool of departure. Also fleeing the Golden State are heavy hitters Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, and others — 85 companies employing 100 or more left the state between 2020 and April 2023; 53 headquarters have left the Bay Area since 2020.

Celebrities filter away from the sun and the sand at a regular rate, with Kirk Cameron being only the latest glitterati finding the spotlight of the Other 47 more congenial. He joins a lengthening roll of A-listers (and B- and C-listers) fleeing Hollyweird for the saner climes of Texas and Tennessee — Mark Wahlberg, Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, Sylvester Stallone, Katherine Heigl, Glen Powell, and Emma Stone, to name a few.

Even the intelligentsia are drawn to the freedom offered elsewhere. The New York Times recently devoted a lengthy piece to Claremont Institute scholars fleeing Southern California for more ideologically friendly territory. Some Claremont intellectuals “see themselves as participants in and advocates for a ‘great sort,’ a societal reordering in which conservatives and liberals naturally divide into more homogenous communities and areas,” the Times reported.

The reasons for the flight from California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and other blue havens are well-known and can be categorized as economic. The population-gaining states have lower taxes — in some cases, no state tax at all; fewer regulations on home construction, which translates to lower housing costs; fewer regulations in general; and more jobs. The states people are leaving are riddled by high energy costs, Rococo regulations, and antagonistic business climates.

But other factors have also played a role. The pandemic tested the American spirit, and the states that quailed in its presence — imposing draconian business strictures, mandating masks for overlong periods, and chaining school doors closed way beyond what prudence required — suffered inordinately from emigration. The lockdown impresarios in California and New York lost 1.2 million and 900,000 residents, respectively, from April 2020 to July 2023, while red refuges from regulation Florida and Texas added 819,000 and 656,000 people during that period. Smaller states mirrored this action, with South Carolina gaining 248,000 residents and Idaho gaining 104,000 while Louisiana lost 111,000 residents and Maryland lost 100,000 during the same period.

Indeed, some liberty-averse blue states have still not returned to pre-COVID job levels — four years later. The usual suspects pop up on this list as well: New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.

It has become commonplace in these destination cities to warn newcomers against bringing their politics with them.

“U.S. states that put in place more stringent lockdown and non-pharmaceutical measures have seen slower recoveries,” Peter Earle, economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the Daily Caller. “Within those states, officials and their supporters will say that they are recovering from a pandemic, which is untrue. They are in fact recovering from the policies they enacted to attempt to combat the spread of the virus.”

States are breaking red and blue in education as well. To get into a public university in Florida, you need to post an ACT or SAT score; California, on the other hand, is “test-free” — the tests are allegedly prejudicial, favoring the rich, and are not required for freshman admission. Florida and Texas are both attacking critical race theory in their school curricula. As for diversity, equity, and inclusion, currently 29 anti-DEI bills are coursing through 17 states with legislatures controlled by Republicans, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Blue states, it goes without saying, have CRT and DEI in their educational blood.

Possibly the purest red-blue line of demarcation concerns transgender policy. Currently, 25 of the 50 states ban biological males from competing in female sports, and a map of those states would mirror almost exactly a presidential election map — with states supporting women only in sports corresponding to states voting reliably Republican.

The red-blue divide is equally stark in “gender-affirming care” for minors, with at least 25 red states banning it and 11 blue states passing sanctuary-style gender-affirming statutes. The legality of these red states’ actions will likely be decided next fall, as the Supreme Court in June agreed to hear an appeal by the Biden administration seeking to stifle red states’ efforts to ban such care.

The wild card in the Big Sort, though, is weather. Obviously, nobody’s leaving California for better weather elsewhere, but many residents of Chicago or New York or Philadelphia are seeking their own version of “climate change.”

And for every conservative fleeing Chicago or New York for economic freedom or safer streets in Nashville, Tennessee, or Cape Coral, Florida, a liberal heads south to escape the snow. Where do the lefties go? Many end up in blue cities in red states. Texas, for example, is not a solid red template but a red background with blue dots — big blue dots (Houston, Austin, the Metroplex). It has become commonplace in these destination cities to warn newcomers against bringing their politics with them.

How many do and how many of them eventually arrive holding fast to their Democratic tenets will determine how pure, and how successful, the Big Sort turns out to be.