Yesterday, the Census Bureau released its annual population estimates for the year running from July 2021 through June 2022 (the Census Bureau counts through mid year, so it can get the data in order by the end of the calendar year). Jim Geraghty, who always gets to things first, noted that the recovery of overall population growth post-Covid is still pretty tepid.
The changes in the country betray a clear regional pattern of population-shifting towards the South and West, and of big blue states losing population to big red states. Of the states whose population is growing, the top seven are all varying shades of red: Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and South Carolina added a total of 1.41 million residents between mid 2021 and mid 2022.
The fastest-growing state in percentage terms, Florida, eclipsed even booming Idaho.
Growth is driven to varying degrees by internal migration, immigration, and birth rates, but, one way or another, these are the places more Americans want to live and raise families, work and start businesses, or retire. Meanwhile, the big-three blue states top the list of states with declining populations — including California, which can’t use a northeastern climate as its excuse, and where U-Haul last year reported running out of trucks while carrying away those residents who had decided to leave.
New York, California, and Illinois combined lost over 398,000 people, with bluish-purple Pennsylvania in fourth place. (Surely, they might fix this with more restrictive business climates and more abortions.) New York now trails Florida in population by over 2 million people and Texas by over 10 million. In percentage terms, it was also the biggest loser, followed by Illinois:
In electoral terms, as I have covered at length (see here, here, and here), the timing and conduct of the 2020 Census unfortunately failed to capture these shifts, so it will be 2032 before they are reflected in the Electoral College or the apportionment of the House of Representatives. But the overall trends are bad news for blue America and its model of governance. Within the Republican Party, they are also good news for the Sun Belt model emblematized by Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Brian Kemp, Doug Ducey, Glenn Youngkin, and Bill Lee, and bad news for a strategy built around prioritizing the party’s appeal to the declining Midwest.
I have not run an updated set of numbers on how these population shifts would affect the House and the Electoral College, but Michael Li of the Brennan Center has:
If the population trends of the past two years remain constant for the rest of the decade (*big if* this early in the decade), reappointment in 2030 would look like:
GAINERS
DE +1 (2 seats)
FL +3 (31)
GA +1 (15)
ID +1 (3)
NC +1 (15)
TN +1 (10)
TX +4 (42)
UT +1 (5)— Michael Li 李之樸 (@mcpli) December 22, 2022
The Sun Belt is the American future. Our politics will reflect that whether we like it or not.