Taking place as always during the Christmas holiday, the release of the Census Bureau’s latest population estimates generally attracts little attention beyond hard-core demographer circles. But this year’s publication features some striking patterns that should also raise eyebrows in the political world.
Simply put, most fast-growing states are red and most slower-growing states are blue, according to Census Bureau data. estimated population changes state by state between July 1, 2022 and July 1, 2023.
Of the 10 states that experienced the fastest growing percentage in population from 2022 to 2023, the top five voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020: South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Idaho and North Carolina. Two other countries in the top 10 also did so: Tennessee and Utah.
If these population growth trends continue for the rest of the decade, it could seriously jeopardize Democrats’ long-term chances of winning the White House. Each state gets one electoral vote for each congressional district, plus two for its Senate seats. Electoral votes are therefore linked to population, but not on an individual basis.
Several analyses, including one by New York University Brennan Center for Justiceprojected what the electoral map would look like if the population growth patterns observed in 2022-2023 continued uninterrupted until the next redistribution cycle, after the 2030 census.
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For Democrats, the picture is bleak.
Among red states, Texas would get four electoral votes; Florida would win three; Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah would each gain one.
Among blue states, California would lose four seats, New York would lose three, Illinois would lose two, and Minnesota, Oregon and Rhode Island would each lose one seat.
Among the battleground states, Arizona and Georgia (both won by Joe Biden) and North Carolina (won by Donald Trump) would gain one seat each, while the Biden-backed states of Michigan and Pennsylvania would lose one seat each.
“Population shifts represent a serious potential risk for Democrats in presidential politics,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University.
While states shifted partisan allegiances with some regularity, these preferences have become entrenched in recent decades.
“Unfortunately for Democrats, a lot has changed over the last half-century,” said Christopher Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University. “Today, the partisan outcome of almost every state is virtually assured before we even know the candidates. »
The growing population in the South is particularly notable, and potentially problematic, for Democrats.
According to the Brennan Center analysis, the South “has become the engine of growth this decade, adding nearly 3.9 million people and nearly all of the U.S. population growth since 2020.” Texas and Florida alone accounted for 70% of U.S. population growth during this period.
One way to assess the political impact is to look at how Biden’s margin of victory in the Electoral College in 2020 would decline if these population shifts continued.
In the 2020 election, Biden won the electoral vote, 306-232. But already, the demographic changes from the 2020 census, applied to states Biden won and lost in 2020, would have produced a narrower victory of three electoral votes, 303-235.
If the changes seen in 2022-23 continued until the next redistribution in 2030, Biden’s victory would have been even more modest – just 291-247. This represents a difference of 15 electoral votes in favor of the Republicans, simply due to population shifts.
The ongoing demographic changes are “more negative than positive for Democrats,” said Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University.
That said, analysts suggest some reasons for caution before assuming Democrats should panic over these trends.
The first is that we are still at the beginning of the decade. Historically, the official decennial census numbers “never match the final estimates” taken each year in between, said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida.
The second is that, at least in the long run, immigration could benefit Democrats.
“Among the 43 states that gained population in 2022-2023, 13 of them would have lost population without net international migration,” Brookings reported.
Population growth due to immigration will not necessarily benefit Democrats. A crucial caveat is that immigrants cannot vote until they are citizens, a process that can take years. Another reason is that, under the Trump era, Hispanics, a key group among current immigrants, have gradually moved away from Democrats and toward Republicans.
The third – and most important – caveat to assuming that Democrats are impervious to demographic trends is that much of this decade’s population growth in red states has come from demographic groups more favorable to Democrats.
Many people who move from blue states to faster-growing red states lean Democratic, said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in North Carolina.
“All growing states are experiencing diverse demographics, based on race, with a potential Great Reverse Migration occurring where Northern blacks return to their ancestral homes in the South; age, with young people leaving for work or study and older people retiring; and education levels, since movers tend to have a higher level of education,” Bitzer said.
Racial and ethnic minorities, young people, and more educated people are disproportionately Democratic.
“It is almost certain that in most cases the increase in the nation’s population will be largely driven by the growth of communities of color,” the Brennan Center concluded in its analysis of census data.
This pattern has already played out in Arizona and Georgia — two historically red states that turned blue for Biden in 2020. While these states are not yet fully blue, they are competitive across parties to a degree never before experienced.
“Biden’s victories in Arizona and Georgia, if they pan out over the long term, would be enough to offset losses from redistribution,” said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and co -author of the forthcoming book, “White Rural Anger: The Threat to American Democracy.”
Schaller added that states’ political leanings have often changed over time.
“For a long time, the growth of the Wild West toward Democrats generally offset the growth of the former Confederate states toward Republicans, but California’s population plateau in recent years has halted that effect,” Schaller said. “Democrats, however, are performing much better in the four southwestern Utah states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada than they did a generation ago, not only in presidential elections, but also in U.S. Senate and gubernatorial elections.”
The two states Democrats are most urgently eyeing to become the new Arizona and Georgia are North Carolina and Texas.
Neither state will be easy to turn blue. North Carolina has only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate once since 1980 – for Barack Obama in 2008. Texas last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1976. In recent elections , Democrats voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. closed the gap in both states, thanks to the strength of well-educated suburbanites, but the party failed to win either state.
“It requires resources and infrastructure to build a grassroots operation and a strategy focused on the dynamics of participation,” Bitzer said.
In particular, predictions of a “Blexas” – a blue Texas – have taken longer to come to fruition than most Democrats had hoped.
“Texas has the largest number of rural voters in the United States, and those rural votes are not going to swing toward the Democratic Party anytime soon,” said Cooper of Western Carolina University.
But if a blue Texas were to somehow emerge, it would be a real game-changer for the Electoral College, likely undoing all other pro-Republican changes to population projections and then some.
“A blue Texas would effectively drive an issue to the heart of the Republican Party’s hopes of winning the presidency, in the absence of a dismal Democratic candidate,” said Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. “It is difficult to imagine a Republican being elected president in 2032 without the 44 electors of Texas.”
