Recent
data
show that the left-wing havens of New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, and New York were among the states controlled by Democrats with the most people leaving for greener (and usually “redder”) pastures. California, another strong Democratic state with high taxes, and which is near the bottom of the Cato Institute’s
freedom rankings
, produced the
fifth-highest
number of refugees in 2021.
High taxes, overburdening regulatory policies, and quality of life concerns are starting to push people away from blue metropolitan areas in these states.
The exodus comes at a time when more people are
relocating
within the United States than ever before. Many of those moving are coming from the Democratic-controlled giants of Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, Boston, and Seattle. These are all places where high taxes, housing prices, regulations, COVID-19 restrictions, homeless crises, and out-of-control crime are major problems.
The future looks bleak, especially for the Empire State. A recent
poll
revealed that more than 40% of New Yorkers are considering relocating to another state. Other
data
revealed that nearly 1 in 3 people would leave their big city abodes if they could, and only 44% would choose to relocate to a big metropolitan area in the future.
So if that’s where people are leaving, then where are they going? It turns out that they are flocking to the southern and western parts of the country. Cities such as Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area have seen significant population gains over the past decade, according to the Census Bureau. Most notably, of the five counties that experienced population
growth
of at least 300,000 people since 2010, four of them are in Texas, Nevada, and Arizona.
A common fear in destination states such as Florida, Texas, and Idaho is that many of the fleeing New Yorkers and Californians will fail to understand what made them run away: They relocate to these areas seeking a better quality of life and more opportunities, but they maintain the horrible political ideologies that caused the problems in the first place.
One person who doesn’t buy it is the Republican governor of Florida,
Ron DeSantis
. In an interview with Ben Shapiro, DeSantis acknowledged these concerns but debunked these claims by using actual data that shows it is not true — at least not in his state:
“Well, here’s the statistics. Not only have you seen the trend from D to R, if you look, since COVID, all 49 other states, and you looked at each one individually, all 49 have had more Republicans move into Florida than Democrats move into Florida. That’s pretty significant. Not one state has sent more Democrats to Florida than Republicans, so I think what that’s telling me is that people are very sensitive to the state governments that they live under.”
