(Continued from Part 1.)
Political Migration: Origins of the Big Sort
In 2008, demographers Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing put a name to a trend that had been going on in America since the 1960s with their book The Big Sort. The authors’ contention is that Americans are sorting themselves geographically and that as a consequence, all areas are becoming more politically polarized.
In their model, people do not necessarily move for explicitly political reasons, but based on lifestyle and cultural choices, which tend to correlate with political outlooks. As they describe it: “People who move to Portland want good public transportation and city life. People who don’t give a hoot about those things migrate to Phoenix, suburban Dallas, south of Minneapolis, or north of Austin.”
The 2008 presidential election defined popular conceptions of “Red” and “Blue” America, contrasting wealthy, progressive states with largely poor, conservative red states. Major cracks appeared with the 2008 financial crash and due to growing political divisions during Obama’s presidency. The map below (click to zoom) tells the story:
(Illustration courtesy of Tilden76 at English Wikipedia. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.)
The growing political tensions and the marginalization of conservatives in liberal America made many “blue state” conservatives feel increasingly out of place. They began feeling pressured to keep their beliefs private or face social and professional attacks. As this intolerance grew, a trickle of conservatives coming out of blue states grew over the following years and became a steady stream of relocatees.
In 2011, the American Redoubt movement was launched by James Wesley, Rawles. It explicitly emphasized the idea of moving for liberty and survivability. This aspect of the movement attracted significant media attention, with dozens of newspaper articles and dramatic mini-documentaries produced by Vice News and The Sunday Times.
The election of Donald Trump as the nation’s 45th president in 2016 could do little to reverse our national divisions. The media rhetoric demonizing Trump and “MAGA” Republicans inflamed tensions and divisions to even higher levels. Then, in 2020, riots and pandemic lockdowns were the final straw, turning the steady tide of migration out of blue states into a torrent. Many tens of thousands of people relocated over the past four years, looking for peace, freedom, and normalcy.
In 2023, California pastor Joel Webbon relocated along with several families to plant a new church in Texas. He outlined the reasons for making the journey in his book Fight by Flight and multiple podcast episodes. He publicly acknowledged that his previous admonitions to his church members to “stay in California” ran contrary to the duties of Christian fathers to lead, provide, and protect their families. Instead, he argued that relocation for a better life was entirely defensible and that Christians should have a clear conscience about making the best choice for their families.
A 2024 report from the Tax Foundation shows that 2024 has moderated the pace of inter-state migration from the peaks of 2021-2023, but the overall pattern of migration out of blue states and into red states has not changed.
An interactive Interstate Moves Map published by The Tax Foundation clearly shows theses changes and trends.
Finally, the 2024 Trump presidency is hopefully a positive sign for our national direction or at least a reprieve from the ruin that the Obama/Biden/Harris administrations seemed determined to run us into. It’s also a more hopeful picture for the longer-term stability of our electoral system, with a massive nationwide pushback against Harris and a victory that really was “too big to rig.”
Impacts and Responses
Public responses to the Big Sort, the American Redoubt, and related movements have been mixed. The overall impact has generally been downplayed by the media, except when they feel the need for a rightwing extremist scarecrow or a lament about political division.
In January 2024, The Orlando Sentinel reported on the Great Sort towards the sunbelt amongst conservatives. “Hundreds of thousands of people leaving states such as New York, Illinois, and California and moving to Florida and Texas in 2022 and 2023.”
In May of 2024, the New York Post reported on conservative movers to Idaho, highlighting a family with young children who chose to leave Portland, Oregon for Sandpoint, Idaho. The father is quoted as saying: “[As a new parent] you’re worried about someone else besides yourself […] so you start to notice threats more. Like, it’s no longer charming to have the homeless guy asleep in front of the grocery store. Now it’s like, all right, this actually might be dangerous.” This is a common thread that’s been repeated by countless blue-state emigres.
In a December, 2024 op-ed in The Tennessean, Josh Abbotoy of New Founding highlighted the potential for Tennessee to chart a path towards a conservative future: “Tennessee has the opportunity to be a national leader in demonstrating how—at its best—technological innovation can bring economic revitalization to rural communities while also allowing them to perpetuate their distinctive cultures and ways of life.” New Founding’s conservative-oriented real estate projects are representative of the pattern of recognizing the political and cultural situation for what it is, and finding new opportunities in it.
As the red states continue to rise in population, prosperity, and influence, there will be many more opportunities for motivated and capable Americans to contribute, both building on the red states’ heritage and inherent strengths, as well as discovering new avenues for their future growth.
Electoral Concerns — Accepting Defeat?
Much of the concern around “red state” relocation is that it might mean giving up in the context of state politics and national elections. There’s a reasonable concern that as motivated conservatives leave states like California, the chances of them ever flipping back become less and less. If this is repeated in enough states, it may even risk the loss of battleground states for conservatives.
13 states are “dark blue”, with Harris winning by over 10%: Vermont, Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, Washington, Delaware, Connecticut, Oregon, Rhode Island, New York, Colorado, and Illinois.
Mote than nineteen million Republican voters are in these dark blue states, effectively disenfranchised in the electoral college and heavily outnumbered in state politics.
To flip these blue states back would take another nine million GOP voters. Practically, there is no source for these voters without a miraculous shift in voting patterns. Simply put, these deep blue states aren’t going to flip back anytime soon.
On the other hand, consider the potential for these 19 million conservative voters to impact politics anywhere else in the United States. Light blue states—Maine, New Mexico, New Jersey, Virginia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire—where Harris won by less than 10%, could all be flipped red by just 800,000 conservative voters. Less than 4% of “dark blue” conservatives could quickly flip to red every single light blue state.
This effect is even more pronounced with the swing states and light red states, where Trump won with a narrow margin in 2024, but Biden won in 2020. The movement of a few thousand conservative voters could serve to secure them as long-term conservative strongholds.
Strategically, the most effective political action for conservatives is to move from a dark blue state to a light blue state and potentially flip it, or to move to a light red state and further secure it. If 1 in 20 of the conservatives that leave California, Washington, Massachusetts, and New York move to Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, or Nevada, then conservatives win, possibly for decades to come.
Reapportionment
Despite mixed opinions on the accuracy of the 2020 census, it led to a reapporionment shift in House of Representatives seats and electoral votes towards growing red states, with Oregon as the only blue state to gain seats. This served to help secure Republican control of Congress, and increase Trump’s lead in the electoral college, in the recent presidential election. The public domain map (shown at right) produced by the U.S. Census Bureau shows the 2020 shift in congressional seats.
The trends of interstate migration and natural population growth in red states will further shift the balance of political power in the Electoral College and House of Representatives toward the red states over the coming years. Forecasts prepared by The American Redistricting Project show shifts in the same direction in 2030, with major gains for Texas, Florida, mountain, and southeastern states, while blue states could lose as many as 12 electoral votes. (See their map.)
State Politics
It’s important to note that *every* state needs more conservatives in state politics. Conservative movers have the ability to launch a revolution in state politics beyond just presidential elections.
Most deep red states have a comfortable and corrupt GOP establishment that is scarcely better than the left. The “Republican” or Republican In Name Only (RINO) establishment has been accustomed to easy electoral victories without real accountability or challenges. More than anything, they need an infusion of passionate, principled patriots who will put their feet to the fire and force them to care about their state and country.
Personal Choice
The possible political downside to the “big sort” is that conservatives will also flee from the light blue and purple battleground states like Minnesota, Michigan, and Nevada. If a significant conservative portion leaves the state, it could jeopardize conservative political strength in those states.
Encouragingly, the data from the Idaho Secretary of State report and other sources suggests that the movers from these states tend to be much more politically moderate. Unlike the dark blue states, people tend to leave the purple states for personal or work reasons rather than ideological ones, so the overall political balance is much less affected.
Ultimately, you have to make the right choice for yourself. While having a political voice is important, situating yourself in the right place for you and your family is paramount.
Blue Shift — Liberal Newcomers?
There has been much concern about migration patterns changing the political and cultural landscape. But as the big commentators have noted, the relocation is happening along political lines. Rather than diluting red state politics, it’s strengthening them.
Prominent red state destinations have gained a notable reputation in median and public perception as being hotbeds of right-wing extremism. This perception is primarily based on media coverage. It vastly overstates the percentage of the conservative population and gives extra visibility to a true extremist fringe. Reality is much more pedestrian, but the perception is enough.
For those with strong liberal sensibilities, the idea of moving to a regressive state (except maybe its most progressive cities) is anathema. While the economic and lifestyle benefits are enough to draw a few progressives, the tendency is for conservative areas to attract more conservatives.
This gained widespread attention with a report published by the Idaho Secretary of State in 2023. It tabulated newly registered Idaho voters who had moved from out of state and their party affiliations. Of 118,639 new Idaho voters, 65% registered as Republicans. A further 21% were unaffiliated, while 12% registered as Democrats. These numbers are so strongly conservative that they significantly *exceed* the proportion of registered Republicans of current Idaho residents, which sat at 50% in 2023.
The effect is even more pronounced with the much-maligned California immigrants. Movers from California registered as Republicans at a rate of 75%, outnumbering Democrat-registered voters by a ratio of more than 7:1. If anything, these newly arrived conservatives have been impacting state and local politics by being more stridently conservative than the locals.
See: State Population Changes Attributable to Interstate Migration.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 3.)
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