Millennial movers have hastened the growth of left-leaning metros in southern red states such as Texas, Arizona, and Georgia. It could be the biggest political story of the 2020s.

Liberals in America have a density problem. Across the country, Democrats dominate in cities, racking up excessive margins in urban cores while narrowly losing in suburban districts and sparser states. Because of their uneven distribution of votes, the party consistently loses federal elections despite winning the popular vote.

The most famous case was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election despite her 2.4-million-vote margin. Clinton carried Manhattan and Brooklyn by approximately 1 million ballots—more than Donald Trump’s margins of victory in the states of Florida, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania combined.

But 2016 wasn’t a fluke. Neither was 2000, when Al Gore lost the election despite winning 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. A recent paper from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin concluded that Republicans are expected to win 65 percent of presidential contests in which they narrowly lose the popular vote.

Democrats can blame the Electoral College for these losses—as they should. But according to the Stanford political scientist Jonathan Rodden’s new book, Why Cities Lose, the problem isn’t just the districting. It’s the density. All over the world, liberal, college-educated voters pack into cities, where they dilute their own voting power through excessive concentration. “Underrepresentation of the urban left in national legislatures and governments has been a basic feature of all industrialized countries that use winner-take-all elections,” he writes.

So just imagine what would happen to the American political picture if more Democrats moved out of their excessively liberal enclaves to redistribute themselves more evenly across the vast expanse of Red America?

Or don’t imagine. Just … wait.

Two weeks ago, I published an article on what I called the urban exodus. More specifically, it is a blue urban exodus, as left-leaning metros in blue states are losing population. The New York City metro area is shrinking by 277 people every day. Other areas bleeding thousands of net movers each year include Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, and Baltimore—all in states that routinely vote for Democrats by wide margins.

These movers are U-Hauling to ruddier states in the South and West. The five fastest-growing metros of the past few years—Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, and Orlando, Florida—are in states won by Trump. The other metro areas with a population of at least 1 million that grew by at least 1.5 percent last year were Las Vegas; Austin, Texas; Orlando, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; San Antonio; Tampa, Florida; and Nashville, Tennessee. All of those metros are in red or purple states.

It’s not just liberals moving to the South. After all, movers to Florida are often retirees who fit squarely in the Fox News demo, and some of the people moving from California to Texas are conservatives. But today’s domestic migrants are often college graduates of the exceedingly liberal Generations Y and Z. “The current migration to these suburbs is mostly people in their 20s and 30s, or Millennials, who are more diverse and liberal than the rest of the population,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. According to his research, Americans ages 20 to 40 are three times as likely to move as people ages 50 to 70.

This drip-drip-drip of young residents trickling down into red-state suburbs is helping to turn southern metros into Democratic strongholds. (Of course, migration isn’t the only factor pushing these metros leftward, but more on that later.) In Texas, Democrats’ advantage in the five counties representing Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin (the “Texas Five” in the graph below) grew from 130,000 in the 2012 presidential election to nearly 800,000 in the 2018 Senate election.

In Arizona, from 2012 to 2016, Democrats narrowed their deficit in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, by 100,000 votes. Two years later, in the 2018 Senate election, the county swung Democratic, with Democrats gaining another 100,000 net votes.

In Georgia, from the 2012 presidential election to the 2018 gubernatorial elections, the four counties constituting most of Atlanta and its suburbs—Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett—increased their Democratic margin by more than 250,000.

What’s remarkable about these changes isn’t just their size, but their resemblance to Trump’s 2016 margins. Trump won Texas in 2016 by 800,000 votes. He won Arizona by 90,000 votes. He won Georgia by 170,000 votes. If these states’ biggest metros continue to move left at the same rate, there is every reason to believe that Texas, Arizona, and Georgia could be toss-ups quite soon.

As noted above, migration isn’t the only reason southern metros might be shifting to the Democratic Party: Young southerners are surely pulling their region left, while older residents could be switching parties in response to Trump. Republicans have likely hurt themselves by moving further to the right to galvanize their white exurban and rural base, even as their support has thinned in the suburbs and among working-class white women.

But domestic migration is key. Just look at Texas. CNN exit polls for the state’s 2018 Senate election showed that Beto O’Rourke was buoyed by recent movers, winning more than 60 percent of those who had moved to Texas within the past 10 years. At current migration rates, the “Texas Five” counties could easily add another 200,000 votes from 2016 to 2020, putting more pressure on Trump’s margin in the state. A September poll conducted by Univision and the University of Houston found the top-six Democratic presidential contenders all leading Trump in Texas.

Outside of national elections, the blue flood of the Sun Belt could have other political implications, such as more showdowns between blue cities and red states. As The Atlantic’s David Graham has argued, North Carolina’s GOP-led general assembly has waged war against liberal cities such as Charlotte—for instance, by reversing a local ordinance that banned discrimination against LGBTQ people. This sort of state-city showdown could become a regular feature of southern politics. In the past six months, both the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Observer have run features bemoaning the Californication of northern Texas, with the former noting that “conservatives fear these domestic migrants will bring with them a liberal ideology that would disturb the Texas way of living.”

While such confrontations may be inevitable, over time the growth of liberal metros could force the Republican Party, which has lately been living off the fumes of retrograde xenophobia, to compete more aggressively for votes in the New South—that is, to be a party for moderates, black voters, and immigrants. The political shift could swing the other way too: Democratic transplants to Dallas and Houston could edge right toward Republican territory, won over by their conservative neighbors’ arguments for lower levels of state and local taxation.

Overall, the southern suburbanization of Democratic votes could be a force for good, not only for Democrats but also, perhaps, for the future GOP—and therefore for the country at large. Without changes to the Electoral College or to the distribution of Democratic votes, the U.S. may be doomed to replay the 2016 election for several more cycles. Coastal liberals will remain justifiably furious that their votes are systematically discounted, while rural conservatives will remain justifiably indignant that the heart of American business and media has flocked to cities that regard the countryside as a xenophobic backwater. The southern blue flood is not a cure-all for this schism. But if more white rural families join liberal transplants and nonwhite families in America’s diverse southern suburbs, Americans might discover, through the sheer fact of neighborly proximity, a less vitriolic and more optimistic political future.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/american-migration-patterns-should-terrify-gop/598153/

who needs Central Americans when white libs will turn states purple on their own?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38850509)

LOL, Republicans don't even win the suburbs anymore.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38850511)

The R/D platforms in 2020 look nothing like the platforms in 2004

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38858488)

nope, being in closer proximity to Trumpmos simply makes you detest them more. there's a reason we don't allow trailer folk to move into civilized communities.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38850532)

i wouldnt worry about ANYTHING they have to say.

TRUMP 2020!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38850534)

Dallas-Fort Worth was one of the top destinations for domestic migrants from California in 2017, according to a recent study.

There were 1,051 moves from coastal California, the home of some of the country's toughest housing markets, to Dallas in the first quarter of 2017, according to Alexandra Lee, a housing analyst with the real estate listing and research site Trulia, which did the study.

Out of 19,132 moves out of the region during that time period, 5.5 percent went to D-FW. The largest destination was the similarly affordable — in relative terms — Las Vegas, which took on 8.1 percent of those interstate migrants during the first three months of last year.

Houston is also a popular destination for people fleeing the California coast — 3 percent of the migrants in the study came to Texas' most populous city, meaning that 8.5 percent of those in the study came to either Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston.

The Trulia report looked at census data for transplants from four coastal California hubs: San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. Homes in those markets listed for an average of $720,000 in March 2017, Trulia says, compared to $313,000 in Dallas and $250,000 nationally.

The home prices in these cities is clearly a major determinant in whether people leave California and to where they move, Lee said over email, but it's not the be-all and end-all.

According to the study, New York City took on the second-most domestic migrants from California in the first quarter of 2017 with 7.3 percent of those migrants. And while the median listing price of $440,000 in the Big Apple leaves more of a ceiling than in, for example, San Jose, where it's $750,000, it's still no small price.

Many from California and elsewhere in the U.S. are drawn to Texas' lower home prices, but the state also has a strong job market -- both in terms of local employers and relocations from other states -- that is attracting migrants.

Texas is a big destination for job-to-job flows, a U.S. Census Bureau-designed statistic that measures flows of employees from one company to another when they've been at each company longer than three quarters. The biggest source of these flows is California, which contributed 6,884 in the first quarter of 2016.

Texas has also been the destination for several high-profile corporate moves from the California coast, perhaps most notably Toyota, which began moving its North American headquarters from Torrance, Calif., to Plano last year. It brought with it the bulk of its 4,200-strong national staff.

With much cheaper, ample real estate — though the list price of both new housing starts and preowned homes is far exceeding what a median Dallasite can afford — and far lower taxes, it's no wonder.

And while Texas is growing at astronomic rates compared to California, the Golden State still represents greener pastures for some. In Q1 2016, there were 5,818 job-to-job flows from Texas to California. It should also be noted that the job flows to Texas represent a tiny share of employment activity in the massive state, according to state employment data.

https://www.trulia.com/research/californians-are-leaving-where-are-they-looking-to-go/

It’s no wonder some Californians are packing their bags and moving elsewhere. Top destination markets for migrants from coastal California metros are to other large metros like New York, Atlanta and Chicago, but also include less expensive Sun Belt markets such as Las Vegas and Phoenix. Californians gravitated to the high job-growth centers of Seattle, Denver, Dallas and Portland, Ore.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38850563)

Right?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38855338)

There is nothing more infuriating than people from NJ or OH who move to SC and then continue to vote dem.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38852525)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38852744)

The South is different. It's a bountiful land of fields and forests spread across a massive plain stretching majestically halfway across the length of a continent. The pattern of settlement is completely different. Yes there are cities in the South, but they aren't as big or as dense as cities in other regions. The population is much more spread out into smaller cities, towns, and rural areas.

The practical effect of this is that people have enough room to make lives for themselves. The cost of living is lower, partially because of the more plentiful land. Even people who aren't rich are more likely to feel like they have enough. There's more pride and less of a tendency to be jealous of some distant elite.

Some people from other areas will obviously stay liberal. But a lot of them, given enough time, will realize that those conservative Southerners might have known what we were talking about.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38855116)

It's the same story in other states. In Georgia, only 47% live in the Atlanta Urban Area. In North Carolina, another lib target, only 20% of the population lives in the Charlotte and Raleigh Urban Areas.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38857714)

https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2017/october/migration.php

Five cities in Texas on the "fastest growing" list for 2016 were all big city suburbs. Lots of libs moving to Texas are moving specifically to the suburbs because they want to start families/access decent schools, and increasingly to the suburbs since real estate prices in the cities have risen from where they were right after ITE. Also e.g. a place like San Marcos and its near suburbs is absolutely a focal point of coastal lib migration.

"Among the five cities that grew most, as a proportion of their size, between 2011 and 2012, three are Texan. San Marcos is out in front with the highest rate of growth among all US cities and towns - 4.9%."

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22649624

So just counting the three big cities on I-35 plus Houston within city limits of each misses a huge portion of the phenomenon of migration overall. But 400k a year means it's enough to further libify all the big cities too, and they were already much more liberal than the rest of the state. And we haven't even brought up El Paso yet, which is its own different but similarly lib-advancing factor in all this. Nor the fact that oil and gas/shale has been booming for the last decade, but that's now almost certainly over, so population levels outside of the big Texas metros and I-35 corridor that attract extraction workers are all about to crash.

I would bet a pretty significant sum of money that the Dems take Texas in the 2024 POTUS election unless they nominate someone crazy like AOC and/or some magical Republican emerges that way overperforms.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38857900)

Lumping GA and NC together with Texas makes no sense bc while both those states have net in-flows above the national average they are nothing compared to Texas which has dominated in-flows for a decade and added several million to its population.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-03-28/america-is-on-the-move-again-and-this-is-where-theyre-going

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38858091)

Genius Planning, amirite?

This is precisely why actual conservatives should be opposed to crony capitalism instead of slamming AOC over the proposed Amazon deal.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38857728)

A number of democrats that move from big cities to southern suburbs may become more conservative once they begin enjoying a certain chill lifestyle without the knockout game. They are unlikely to become redneck hardcore ARE COUNTRY LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT types, but they may drift moderate or center right. Hard to know what actually happens to those migrating dems five years out.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38857970)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38858052)

There’s posts in this thread that mention that too

And even if they start getting used to low taxes and lax gun laws doesn’t mean they’ll start voting GOP

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38858087)

so they’ll pull the GOP leftwards

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4346054&forum_id=2#38858103)