No coalition in American politics is forever. But the opportunity to dominate the politics of the 2030s is lying out there for Republicans.
This morning, the Census Bureau released its annual population estimates for the year running from July 2023 through June 2024 (the Census Bureau counts through mid year, so it can get the data in order by the end of the calendar year). The trends are less dramatic than they were in the prior years, but they continue to show the growth of mostly Republican-governed Sun Belt states outstripping the stagnation of blue areas. The census breaks out the fastest-growing states in percentage terms:
The District of Columbia recouped its population losses of 2020–23. There are different theories for that: the end of the pandemic, the continuing growth of federal government and federal government-adjacent jobs, and the subsiding of the worst of the George Floyd–era crime wave.
But D.C. bucked the trend. The rest of the list, aside from Delaware, is varying shades of red. Five of the states are dominated by Republicans, including perennial growth states Florida and Texas; North Carolina and Arizona both have Republican state legislatures, Nevada has a Republican governor, and all three states voted for Donald Trump. The influence of Mormon family growth can be seen as well in the presence of Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada on the list.
In total, Texas and Florida added over a million residents between them, far outstripping the rest of the country:
The inverse table, which I compiled from the census data set, is more of a mixed bag:
Aside from Puerto Rico, only Vermont and West Virginia lost population in the past year. Absent from this list are some of the big blue states that have dominated the population-loss tables in recent years, such as New York, California, and Illinois. As I noted in early 2023, California’s decline may have been overstated during the Covid period because the border was closed, so it was unable to replenish its chronic hemorrhaging of Californians with a steady stream of immigrants. Well, a shortage of immigrants hasn’t been anybody’s problem under Joe Biden. But the big blues are well-represented when the past four years are aggregated:
Where does this all lead in terms of shifting political power? Per the American Redistricting Project, here’s what the census projections would yield by the end of the decade in terms of the reapportionment of the House and the Electoral College:
The projections change from year to year; these are less dire than they were a year ago for New York and California (Michigan is no longer projected to lose a seat, while Wisconsin is now on the chopping block), and that can continue to shift with events — including the return of stricter immigration policy. But clearly, this is an electoral bonanza for the current Republican coalition in both the House and the White House, if it can be held together. Texas and Florida would each gain another four seats, assuming the census doesn’t screw up again as it did in 2020. With this Electoral College in 2032, the GOP could afford to lose Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada from its 2024 coalition and still carry the Electoral College 273265. If these estimates hold, here are the states with a net change of more than one seat over the 2010, 2020, and 2030 Censuses:
TX +10
FL +7
AZ +2
NC +2
UT +2
OH -3
PA -3
IL -3
CA -5
NY -5
This is more fodder for my case that rustpolitik is not a long-term winning strategy for Republicans; while it’s certainly helpful to fight for votes in the Midwest and the Rust Belt, the real key to the party’s national prospects lies in cementing its control of the Sun Belt. That means winning more elections in places where Republicans already know how to win and govern; they just need to stop the self-destructive infighting and poor candidate choices that left us with Democratic governors in North Carolina and Arizona and four Democratic senators in Georgia and Arizona.
Using those projections, here is how each Republican presidential ticket’s electoral map would be improved, going back to 2004 (the 2000 election was run on the 1990 Census map):
Trump 2024: +10 (312 to 322 electoral votes)
Trump 2020: +14 (232 to 246)
Trump 2016: +12 (304 to 318)
Romney 2012: +11 (206 to 217)
McCain 2008: +15 (173 to 188)
Bush 2004: +20 (286 to 306)
No coalition in American politics is forever. But the opportunity to dominate the politics of the 2030s is lying out there, if present demographic trends hold, Republicans can avoid a major realignment, and they don’t shoot themselves in the foot too often.