I & I Editorial BoardWhen U-Haul released its latest “Growth Index” this week, it made us wonder if blue states will ever get a clue.
Once again, the index found a strong migration out of blue states and into red states.
“Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee follow Texas as prime destinations. It’s the same top five from 2024 and 2023, although in a different order,” the company said.
The biggest losers: California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York.
Of the top 10 growth states, nine voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 and seven currently have Republican governors.
At the other end of the spectrum, nine of the 10 at the bottom of the ranking have Democratic governors, and seven of them voted for Kamala Harris.
U-Haul bases its index on more than 2.5 million one-way truck rentals each year, which makes it an excellent gauge of household migration, since these largely represent people moving themselves.
This is not a new trend. It’s been happening for years as businesses and families pick up and move away from the warmth of collectivism and toward the frigidity of rugged individualism.
Or, more accurately, businesses and families are moving from big government states that have high taxes, onerous regulations, lousy schools, and high crime, into those that are more business and family friendly, safer, and more affordable.
From 2012 to 2022, California lost more than 1.6 million people to net domestic migration; New York almost 1.8 million; Illinois nearly 900,000, according to Unleash Prosperity’s “Vote with Your Feet” analysis of IRS data.
And with these millions of people went billions of tax dollars. Over those years, for example, California lost more than $102 billion in taxable income as people fled the state: New York lost $111 billion, Illinois $63 billion.
Our own analysis of county migration data found that people aren’t just moving from blue to red states, but from blue to red counties within states. We found that from 2020 to 2023, 3.7 million moved from blue counties to red.
Here are some more details from our research:
- Of the 555 counties that voted for Joe Biden, 343 (or 62%) lost population since 2020. Of the 2,589 counties that voted for Trump, 1,726 (or 67%) gained population.
- The 11 counties that had the biggest population declines over the past three years all voted for Biden. They lost a net total of 2 million people.
- Of the 11 counties with the biggest gains in population, eight voted for Trump in 2020.
The great mystery isn’t why so many people are voting with their feet in favor of lower taxes, more opportunity, lower cost of living, better schools, and safer neighborhoods.
It’s why the people left behind in those blue states keep punishing themselves.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
The only time Blue states will act more like Red states is if they become colorblind.
However, with the likes of Blue State Governors (Newsom, Pritzker, Walz) at the helm, I don’t think their being “colorblind” would make much difference.
As a matter of fact, Walz might alert his Somali friends that “colorblind” could be another welfare scheme they could use to defraud the state and Federal Governments-and then when the Somali’s are criticized they could charge “racism” and “the Red States are not colorblind enough!”
Thank you!
What I would like to know is do these people move to Red states and then start voting blue? If so then please stay, we don’t want our states flipped
No divorce at all! We’re all Americans, mostly educable.
This is just the market at work. Customers leave bad products for higher value offerings.
Dumb ideas and worse service of California already outweigh natural climate. Witness despair over the inexcusable wildfires.
The question is, are these people bringing the blue state politics with them?
This is simpler than politics.
We already know from surveys and elections that a little less half of Americans don’t vote, and even among those that vote, they don’t pay attention to politics much except in the couple months before an election.
If you own a house in California and sell it, it puts housing in about 35 other states in an extremely affordable range for you and in about 15 states you could buy 2 houses in cash with 50% equity in an average Cali house.
It can’t go the other way. If I’m in California right now, I can move to Kentucky and pay cash. If I’m in Kentucky I can’t move to California without a high income job in hand.
What a terrible analysis. One should first determine the blue red divide is a relevant factor. Portraying it like this is just stirring op division.
I am honestly starting to believe more and more than almost all elected democrats are due to fraud and election rigging. It is well know than once democrats become established in an area it is harder and harder to get rid of them as they get their public union workers into the polls and handling ballots. Not to mention the massive fraud and grift uncovered in pay to play schemes and mail in balloting harvesting schemes. They cheat, everyone knows they do, people joke about it in places like Chicago. So let’s ask the real question, how many elected democrats were actually honestly elected?