One of the most important phenomena in contemporary America is the Great Sort–we are increasingly dividing into red and blue states, in part because of domestic migration. But that migration is basically a one-way street: people are fleeing blue states and moving to red states. Many, but not all, of these migrants are conservatives seeking a more congenial home. And of course there are liberals living in red states, but very few of them are picking up stakes and volunteering for higher taxes and more sluggish economies.
The Committee to Unleash Prosperity documents the effect of these migrations over just the period from 2019 to 2022:
For the four years from 2019 through 2022, the Red States gained 2.23 million net domestic migrants, all at the expense of blue states.
The net effect is that red state population increased by 4.5 million, compared to blue state population as a result of net domestic migration over the four years. This is the equivalent of roughly eight or nine additional red state congressional seats.
These are the top five and bottom five states over that time:
As I noted yesterday, Minnesota is another blue state from which people are fleeing. The numbers are smaller than California et al. mostly because our population is smaller.
Perhaps as important as the sheer loss of population from blue states is the amount of productive labor that migrants are taking with them. Blue states are losing precisely the wrong people:
As a result, the Red States gained $191.93 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI), while the Blue States lost that much taxable income.
I think it was Justice Brandeis who referred to the states as laboratories of democracy. Well, we have been carrying out a laboratory experiment in governance, and the results are in. Conservative policies work, and liberal policies don’t.
There is no reason to expect the Great Sort to abate any time soon. On the contrary, as time goes by the superiority of red state governance becomes ever more obvious. And the blue states that chase away their most productive citizens will only face worse and worse fiscal problems that will make it harder for them to compete.
Where does it all end? I don’t know, but one possibility is that the current balance in our national politics, where far-left and center-right forces are almost equal, may before long become obsolete. America may become definitively a center-right country, simply because that is where most people and most resources are located.
