Democrats already nervous about new census

What the Census Numbers Tell Us

The trend of people moving to metros with the densest urban cores—a mainstay of media coverage—is clearly over. The nation’s two megacities, New York and L.A., are shedding domestic migrants far faster than smaller metropolitan areas. Over the last year, the two coastal giants have lost domestic migrants at a rate of 0.95 percent—five times faster than metropolitan areas between 5 million and 10 million residents. Meanwhile, metropolitan areas with between 2.5 million and 5 million residents added domestic migrants at 0.14 percent, while those with 1 million to 2.5 million people grew through domestic migration at a rate of 0.33 percent. The major surprise was in the often-overlooked medium-size metropolitan areas—those with between 500,000 and 1 million people. These metros gained 105,000 net domestic migrants, far outpacing the negative 165,000 net domestic migrants for those with populations greater than 1 million.

Last year’s growth leaders among the large metros were located heavily in the dispersed metros of the Sun Belt and intermountain West—Austin, Las Vegas, Dallas–Ft. Worth, San Antonio, Raleigh, Charlotte, Tampa–St. Petersburg, Orlando, and Jacksonville. Among metros with more than 500,000 people, Seattle is the only one in the Top 25 located on either the West Coast or the Northeast—and it comes in at number 25.

Along with the shift to medium-size metros, the Census estimate confirms a trend that, in some circles, is hard to accept: people are moving “back to the suburbs.” In 2017, the core counties lost nearly 440,000 net domestic migrants, while the suburban counties gained more than 250,000. This trend is true even in New York, where the city dominates the local economy and offers urban amenities that easily outshine those of typical urban cores. The day before the new population estimates were released, the New York Times wrote eagerly about the decline of New York’s suburbs and exurbs. But, if the editors had waited for the 2017 data, they would have stumbled on another, less-welcome statistic: in terms of domestic migration, New York’s suburbs gained five people for each one who moved to Gotham over the last year. This is a far cry from earlier in the decade, when the city routinely added more population than the suburbs.

So what this implies in a nutshell is that we may see a population shift (possibly significantly) from the coastal states to the Western, Midwestern, and Southern states. What this would mean, would be an electoral college (and possible congressional district) shift from blue states, to red states. It also may decrease the number of deep blue urban congressional districts and replace them with purple or red suburban districts within those states.

When one realizes that there is already a distinct possibility that California will lose Electoral College votes moving forward, it makes their concerns about an under count of the illegal alien population all that more urgent. Already losing legitimate citizen population, already dealing with a slowdown of new illegals, already dealing with threats of deportations, they now are concerned that what is left of their illegal population will not be represented.

In lieu of this new census projection, is it any wonder that California wants to be a "sanctuary state"? If you can't keep the citizens you have from leaving, then you apparently must try to proactively recruit new citizens to take their place. Apparently whether or not they are legal is an insignificant detail.