It has been well established that some of the country's biggest, bluest states have been losing their residents since the pandemic hit more than four years ago. Now, some are hopeful the migration trend could be the thing that helps Democrats secure a 2024 victory.
When Covid severed the ties between white-collar workers and their offices, many urban residents traded the high cost-of-living in cities New York and San Francisco for more affordable locales, many of which happened to be in reddish-purple states that make up the Sun Belt. Those migration patterns led to a boom in states like Texas and Florida, which have, collectively, seen their population grow by more than 2.4 million people since 2020.
Next month, the results of those migratory patterns will play out for the first time in a presidential election, potentially redefining the key battleground states that Democrats and Republicans fight over every four years.
Between 2020 and 2023, only 15 states lost residents. And only four of those 15 are reliably red, according to a Newsweek analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau's population estimates. California and New York -- two of the nation's bluest states -- saw the greatest mass exodus of people, but even blue-leaning swing states, like Michigan, are seeing a decline in population growth.
California, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and the District of Columbia all saw their populations drop over the last four years.
The number of residents in New York dropped by some 630,000, the most of any state. California lost about 570,000 people. Illinois' population declined by roughly 260,000.
At the same time, North Carolina, which had the third greatest growth after Texas an Florida, added nearly 400,000 more people between 2020 and 2023. Georgia's population grew by over 300,000 in that period. Arizona, South Carolina and Tennessee's populations each increased by more than 200,000 more residents.
It's not certain how those patterns will impact voting trends. After all, not every New Yorker who left for Florida was a Democrat, just as not every Ohioan who absconded to the Carolinas was a Republican.
But some Democratic strategists who spoke to Newsweek appear cautiously optimistic that the migration of blue voters to red-leaning areas could help boost Vice President Kamala Harris in states that have long been GOP strongholds.
Democratic strategist Laurie Glenn pointed to Texas, a reliably red state that the party has long held out hope could eventually turn blue given the inflows of people from regions like the Northeast, as well as a large population of immigrants. For the sixth time in eight years, the Lone Star state was ranked the biggest growth state in 2023.
The home state of George W. Bush that he won with 59.3 percent in 2000 and with 61.1 percent in 2004 voted for Donald Trump by a much narrower margin in both 2016 and 2020. Even though only some 38 percent of Texans supported Al Gore in 2000, 43 percent backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 46 percent voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
FiveThirtyEight shows Harris still running slightly behind Biden in Texas, with 44 percent support.
"There's an enormous amount of people who are blue moving to these formerly conservative states," Glenn told Newsweek. "Texas is becoming very purple.... Wisconsin has increased, dramatically, their Democratic vote. In Michigan, every elected office has gone Democratic."
Veteran Republican strategist Michael DuHaime told Newsweek that Texas is probably still a decade out from becoming truly purple as a consequence of its new residents. But that leftward shift, he said, is already becoming apparent in other Sunbelt states like North Carolina and Georgia.
"As people leave blue states, they bring their politics with them," DuHaime said.
"As people from the Northeast move to Charlotte and Atlanta, the Northeast is not turning red, but the North Carolina and Georgia are turning purple. Most are moving for fiscal reasons, not for social reasons, but they are far more socially progressive or tolerant than the state they are joining as a whole."
At the same time, he pointed out that blue-state residents who are relocating to get away from liberal politics are gravitating toward Midwest and mountain states like Idaho and Montana, where their conservative leanings would not drastically change the map in those deep-red states.
Robert Creamer, a progressive political consultant who has worked on hundreds of electoral campaigns, told Newsweek that with Democrats moving to Sunbelt states, these population shifts could have impacts on not only the presidential race but also competitive Senate races in states like Texas, Florida and Arizona.
Creamer said that Michigan is the only "serious presidential swing state" that has lost residents since 2020, but emphasized that it's difficult to predict how these migration changes will affect November's election because "it's hard to know who exactly is moving."
Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey School, pointed out that the stream of people moving from California to Texas tend to be younger and better educated. That is vastly different from those relocating from New York to Florida, who tend to be older.
"So much depends on the characteristics of the migrants," Johnson said.