Progressive governors of the blue states of California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts have vowed to resist or fight against Trump 2.0. New Jersey governor Murphy said he would "fight to the death." Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis have formed a nonpartisan group focused on countering "threats of autocracy" and note "they're talking to other Democrats and Republicans about joining the effort, which will have its own staff and researchers." The resistance is focused on climate action, deportations, limiting gun rights, and reproductive freedom.
These efforts are misdirected. The surest sign is that Americans are fleeing from the places these governors and their #Resistence reign—and fleeing to red states where policies like those proposed by Trump have won out. For the past 30 years, progressive policies have fueled a mass exodus of the citizens of California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, whether with high-, middle-, or blue collar incomes. From 1990 to 2021, net domestic migration fleeing their states has totaled 13 million, as reported by the IRS.
Meanwhile, the red states of Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, Nevada, and South Carolina have had net in-migration of 13 million over the same period.
Policies fueling this blue state exodus include out-of-control public pensions and other spending, a plethora of ineffective and expensive subsidized housing programs, ineffective public schools, opposition to school choice, high crime, unaffordable housing, excessive taxes of all types, and rising levels of homelessness.
It is no coincidence that these five states are the ones with the highest levels of net out-migration over the last 30 years. According to the IRS, between 1990 and 2021, California led the nation with net domestic out-migration. 4.6 million people left the state. The trend continued for the next three years, as 307,000 individuals left California, making it again the state hemorrhaging the most residents.
California was followed by New York, which lost similar numbers of residents, many of whom decamped to Florida and New Jersey. Interestingly, those leaving New York had incomes $17,000 higher than those migrating to New York.
Illinois lost 2 million residents during the 1990s and early 2000s, and another 90,000 from 2020-2021. Massachusetts came next, losing 50,000 residents since 2020 and almost 1 million residents in the decades before. And again, those leaving had incomes $5,000 higher than those migrating to Illinois.
Finally, New Jersey lost 40,000 residents in 2020 and 1 million between 1990 and 2021, and those leaving, the largest share to Florida or Texas, had incomes $7,000 higher than those who moved to New Jersey.
By contrast, between 2020 and 2021, Florida grew by 245,000 souls, while Texas grew by 185,000.
The trend is undeniable: Americans are fleeing progressive states for conservative ones, and they are bringing their incomes with them.
If these blue state governors want to reverse this mass out migration, time is of the essence. They should focus on enacting the kinds of policies that drew their erstwhile residents to Florida and Texas: lowering taxes, getting tough on crime, promoting deregulation, reforming public pensions, enacting school choice, enforcing immigration laws, helping blue-collar workers find good paying jobs, ending rent control where prevalent, and adopting light-touch density (LTD) and livable urban villages (LUV). LTD and LUV legalize homes built by the free market that are affordable and inclusionary.
Failure to take these actions will mean that with all their talk of "resistance," their states will face a doom loop of permanent decline due to shrinking populations, rising subsidies, diminished economic vitality, increasing poverty, and a less prosperous future for their children and grandchildren.
Edward J. Pinto is a Senior Fellow and Codirector of the AEI Housing Center.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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