November is months away, but people are already voting with their feet

Voters don’t get to choose whether they want to live under Republican or Democratic Party rule for almost four months, but people are already voting with their feet, they have been for years, and their choice is clear: people overwhelmingly want to live in Republican-run states.

The latest data come from the Internal Revenue Service which released the most current migration data on June 27. The data come from taxpayers’ 2022 tax returns and show how many taxpayers moved between each state in 2021.

The five states that gained the most people and the most income from new people coming to their state were Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. On net, Florida gained 245,000 people and $36 billion in adjusted gross income, Texas gained 181,000 and $10 billion, North Carolina gained 83,000 people and $4.6 billion, South Carolina gained 70,000 and $4.8 billion, while Tennessee gained 61,000 and $4.7 billion.

These are all solidly Republican states with all but North Carolina led by a Republican governor. And even North Carolina has a centrist Democratic governor kept in check by Republican majorities in the state House and Senate.

Now this data does not reflect population gain from new tax filers. This is purely based on existing taxpayers who moved from one state to another. And so if there were states that gained taxpayers, there would have to be states that lost taxpayers, and those states are California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

California lost 307,000 people and $23.8 billion, New York lost 223,000 people and $14 billion, Illinois lost 87,000 and $10 billion, Massachusetts lost 45,000 people and $4 billion, while New Jersey lost 37,000 and $5.3 billion.

All of these loser states are run by the Democratic Party, some uninterrupted for decades. Some Democratic Party apologists have argued in the past that similar numbers only reflect people moving from the cold Northeast to warmer Southern states. But this does not explain why California is the biggest loser state of all. No one has ever left California because of bad weather. Ignoring the party that controls the government, California is the most beautiful place in the world with the world’s most temperate and enjoyable climate. Something must be really, really wrong with California’s governing party for so many people to be fleeing the state so fast, and taking their income with them.

Democratic Party-controlled states are terrible places to live because the interest groups that control the Democratic Party make life unaffordable for middle-class families. The environmental groups that fail to implement expensive taxes and mandates at the federal level succeed at the state level. As a result, all of the Democratic states listed above have above-average gas and residential electricity prices, with California having the highest costs of all. Environmental groups also make building new homes next to impossible with all of the required environmental reviews, zoning, and clean energy mandates for construction materials and appliances.

Not only are housing and energy costs absurdly high in Democratic Party-controlled states, but the services delivered by these states are all terrible as well. Government unions in every one of the five states above are more powerful than the environmentalists, and the purpose of all government unions is to enrich their members at the expense of taxpayers while delivering as few actual services as possible. Why do all the governors of the Democratic states send their children to private schools? Because they know the teachers unions have made the public schools places they do not want to send their children.

In order to pay for all of the inefficient and corrupt government union salaries, Democratic-controlled states also have to raise taxes far higher than states without government unions. This makes it enticing for businesses to leave high-tax, bad-service Democratic-run states, for low-tax, efficient-service Republican states.

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It is not that Republican-run states are perfect. There is corruption and bad decisions are made occasionally, but at least the primary elections are not controlled by government union bosses whose allegiances are always to government union employees and never to the average citizen.

Voters across the country have a choice this November: the higher taxes, higher energy costs, and higher housing unaffordability of the Democratic Party, or the low tax, low energy costs, better housing affordability of the Republican Party. Many voters aren’t waiting. Their choice is clear.

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