People probably move to states at least in part because they like the policies in those states, not because they want to alter them.
There’s a long-running economic and demographic trend in the United States of businesses and people moving to the Sun Belt. Those states tend to be Republican. With the exception of New Mexico, every state located entirely south of Virginia currently has a Republican-controlled state legislature. And New Mexico was also the only one of those states that did not give its electors to Donald Trump, assuming Trump’s lead in Arizona, which has yet to be called, holds.
This trend should be encouraging for Republicans. It’s a sign that Republican policies are successful.
These states tend to have low taxes. The highest top income-tax rate in the region, South Carolina’s at 6.4 percent, is less than half of California’s 13.3 percent top rate. Most states’ are below 5 percent, Arizona’s is just 2.5 percent, and three of these states (Florida, Texas, and Tennessee), including the two most populous, don’t have individual income taxes at all. Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Arizona have all adopted flat taxes in the past several years. They also tend to have below-average property-tax burdens (with Texas as the major exception).
All of these states (except, again, New Mexico) have right-to-work laws on the books. Many of them have attracted manufacturing firms that are fleeing pro-union Northern states. Republican governors spoke out against the progressive United Auto Workers’ attempts to unionize car plants in their region, and the UAW’s much-hyped unionization streak was ended at one when Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama voted against the union.
The top four U.S. states by land-use freedom in the Cato Institute’s Freedom in the 50 States report are all Republican Sun Belt states (in order: Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Arkansas). When Donald Trump talks about making it easier to build with federal deregulation, he is following the lead of what these states have already accomplished.
Florida is arguably the greatest Republican policy success story of the past decade or so. It ranks No. 1 on the Cato index for government consumption and government employment (with low levels of those measures corresponding to higher rankings). The Florida government spends roughly half as much per person as New York and delivers higher-quality public services. The states had roughly equal populations only ten years ago, and now Florida has 2.6 million more people.
This trend has grown the Sun Belt’s relative political power, as more population corresponds with more House members and more electors for president. After the 2020 Census, Texas gained two House seats, and North Carolina and Florida each gained one. After the 2030 Census, Texas is projected to gain four House seats, Florida three, and Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee one each.
But embedded in the celebration of these successful states is a conservative fear: That by attracting people from failing Democratic states, they will become more like those states when people vote for Democrats. This is embodied in the perennial Democratic hope that Texas will flip blue, and the real sense in cities such as Austin that progressives are entrenching themselves in power.
Yesterday’s election results should temper that conservative fear. Maybe sometime in the future these states will flip blue. No victories are permanent. But there’s little evidence of it so far.
Despite being a top destination for inbound migration for years, Florida keeps getting redder. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Florida 49–48 and Joe Biden 51–48. He leads Harris by 13 points. Rick Scott barely won his elections for governor in 2010 and 2014 and his first election to the Senate in 2018. He just won reelection by 13 points.
In 2016, Trump won Texas 52–43. In 2020, he won it 52–46. With basically all the votes counted, he currently leads Texas 56–42. After holding steady, and despite millions of dollars of campaign spending by Democrats from across the country and thousands of California, New York, and Illinois expats moving there, Texas has become redder.
Not only that, Texas governor Greg Abbott has been successful in improving the Texas Republican Party by defeating anti-school-choice legislators in primary elections. After yesterday’s general-election results, Abbott said he now expects Texas to pass school choice next year once the new legislature meets.
How about the Carolinas? Trump’s wins in North Carolina have been: 50–46 in 2016, 50–49 in 2020, and 51–48 yesterday. In South Carolina, he won 55–41 in 2016, 55–43 in 2020, and 58–40 yesterday. Not getting bluer.
Georgia did flip from Republican to Democratic in 2020, but Trump’s lead there now is larger than his margin of victory in 2016. Governor Brian Kemp has built one of the best Republican political operations in the country, fueling his eight-point reelection over Stacey Abrams, who outspent him and received nothing but fawning media coverage.
Arizona also flipped, only barely, in 2020, but Trump’s share of the vote there currently is three points higher than it was in 2016. Still only about two-thirds of precincts are reporting in Arizona, so that could change, but it’s still not evidence of consistent leftward drift.
Tennessee keeps moving rightward, even as Democratic-controlled Nashville has become a hotspot for inbound migration from blue states. Trump won the state 61–35 in 2016, 61–37 in 2020, and 64–34 yesterday. Governor Bill Lee won his first term 60–39 in 2018 and was reelected 65–33 in 2022.
It would seem that people probably move to states at least in part because they like the policies in those states, not because they want to alter them. And people who already live in these states will probably be more likely to support Republicans when conservative policies are put in place and their results are enjoyed. Republicans should be unashamed of their successes in the small-government Sun Belt and continue to build on them. As Dan McLaughlin noted, those states are where the GOP’s future lies.