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Democrats touting wealth taxes in states such as California and Washington are quick to blame tax-fleeing millionaires for escaping to Republican states. But dig into the data, and something far more dire is happening for Democratic Party prospects. The blue state refugees migrating to red America are not the comically wealthy, but the ordinary working-class and young folks who can no longer afford the Democratic degrowth agenda.
Let’s consider four new data findings separately and then find the meaning in tandem.
HOUSING AFFORDABILITY COULD COST THE GOP 2026
First, the research team at FinanceBuzz dug through the latest census data dump to conclude that while a near-record one-third of all adults younger than 35 still live with their parents, it’s not distributed equally. Whereas fewer than 1 in 5 adults younger than 35 still live with Mom and Dad in Wyoming and both Dakotas, nearly half of those do in New Jersey, Connecticut, and California.
Now let’s look at some California-specific data. A Cotality analysis found that while 7% of all homes that transferred ownership nationwide did so via inheritance last year, that figure was 18% in California and at least 20% in the counties of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and Napa. The Public Policy Institute of California used the state’s Finance Department data to discover that residents without a college degree were twice as likely to leave the state as college graduates. Over the past decade, the PPIC ascertained that the Golden State lost fewer than 2% of its higher-income adults and 1% of its college graduates but more than 10% of its lower-income population and 8% of its noncollege population.
For a final snapshot of moving patterns, let us turn to further census analysis from the Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies. The 2026 Family Structure Index found that since 2019, 370,000 families composed of married parents with children have moved from blue states to red states, and while fertility rates fell across the nation in that time, the 5.4% decline in red states was still less than the 7.8% decline in blue states.
The folks at the IFS and the CCV tie all these stories together for us somewhat neatly with a bow. Using a regression model to compare the influence of the home price-to-median-income ratio on a state’s fertility rate, the FSI concludes that a full 25% of a state’s fertility rate could be explained by housing affordability.
Much has been made about the looming disaster for Democrats in the next decade’s census, with a good deal of the blame deservedly going to the party’s disastrous tax-and-spend policies. The fact that 10 blue states, including the obvious candidates of California and New York, are trying to pass exit taxes to cordon in wealth as weary residents try to flee for friendlier governments indeed gives the game away. In the short run, Democrats are panicked over the loss of revenue to fund their policies, and in the long run, they’re apoplectic over a projected loss of 11 seats in the House of Representatives and Electoral College votes, which Republicans are slated to gain.
Throw in President Donald Trump‘s early success at reversing former President Joe Biden‘s open border and his first year of mass deportations, and the population projection has become even more dramatic. Three in four of the nation’s counties experienced absolute population decline when accounting for both domestic and international migration. But again, that decline disproportionately disfavors urban bases in bluer states. Los Angeles County lost more than half a percentage point of its population, and Queens and Brooklyn lost just shy of half a percent of their populations, while the rosy metros of Ocala, Florida, and Myrtle Beach and Spartanburg in South Carolina rose by 3.4%, 3.2%, and 2.8%, respectively.
“Geographically, many of the fastest-growing counties were in states along the southeast coast of the United States in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia,” the census concludes. “Among counties with populations of 20,000 or more, nine of the top 10 fastest-growing counties were in the South, as were 45 out of the top 50.”
The Left’s love for high taxes is nothing new and nothing secret. But its policy decision to obstruct new housing construction to maintain the artificially inflated prices of existing housing stock is indeed a more novel and less explicated development. Nobody else likes new taxes, especially when they go to progressive absurdities such as California’s Medicaid-for-illegal immigrants or Minneapolis’s “Quality Learning Center.” But blue-state refugees cannot afford the housing crises created by their governments’ obsession with local zoning and environmental regulations.
One way we know this is because blue state refugees are saying it outright. That PPIC study found that a plurality of residents leaving California cited housing as the primary reason. More importantly, the revealed preferences of these residents concur with what they say. Half of California’s refugees buy a home in their new states compared to a third of California’s new incoming migrants. Similarly, Boston University found that 70% of the states Massachusetts refugees move to have better housing affordability. And the Fiscal Policy Institute reports that in the top 20 counties where New York City refugees move to, savings on housing costs are 15 times greater than tax savings.
It’s easy to yell at theoretical Gen Zers to log off TikTok and Tinder and go actually ask someone out to get on with their adult lives. It’s a little different when you consider the specific headwinds.
If you’re an adult younger than 35 in California, you are more likely to be living with your parents, 39%, than you are to own your own home, 15.5%. If you do get to own a home, it is more likely to be an inheritance, 18%, than a purchase of a new build, 7.7%. For maybe a third of all the Golden State’s Gen Zers, the only way to get married and start a family is literally to leave.
Loyal Washington Examiner readers already knew that the housing crisis, which is almost exclusively driving economic discontent with the Trump administration, is one fueled by Democrats at the local level, as the census found that states with Republican governors issued almost 30% new housing permits per capita than states with Democratic governors in 2024.
VOTERS STILL DISCONTENT WITH IMPROVING ECONOMY BECAUSE OF HOUSING
Trump has found himself in a rhetorical bind, trying to convince boomers that he can keep their home values inflated while simultaneously pressing for new housing supply to lower costs. The loudest right-wing voices online aren’t helping, lionizing aesthetic traditionalism while vilifying urban density — not just because of Democratic tolerance for disorder, but opposing walkability and city life as ends in themselves.
But voters look at what Republicans do, not what they say. And the fact is that for the next generation of young folks who want the American dream, home ownership and children included, the tide only goes from left to right.
