Red and blue states are fighting over redistricting, with an eye on this year’s midterm elections. The majority party’s strategy in each state is to maximize its advantage by changing the boundaries of the other party’s congressional districts. The redrawn districts dilute historic voters of the opposition party so much that they almost needn’t bother showing up on Election Day.
Yet there’s another pre-voting contest that is getting far less attention in the press: the one where Americans are voting with their feet.
Internal migration matters a great deal in the House of Representatives, capped by law at only 435 districts across the country, and in the Electoral College as well. The total Electoral College vote equals the total number of representatives and senators (100) from the states, plus three votes for the District of Columbia, for 538 total. The ticket that can cobble together at least 270 of those votes wins the presidency.
We might understand this better by thinking of musical chairs. Every one of those chairs that gets yanked from a state translates into a loss of influence. But unlike in the game, the chairs don’t go away; they simply get reassigned to states whose populations have swelled. More chairs mean greater influence when it comes to controlling Congress and the White House.
Reapportionment of districts happens every 10 years, following the national census. So the next reshuffle will come in 2031, after the 2030 census.
At mid-decade, things are looking pretty good for Republicans. That’s because people are moving in significant numbers from Democratic strongholds such as California and New York to more Republican-leaning states such as Texas and Florida.
When the music stops
The American Redistricting Project has released one map with projections that has Texas gaining four House seats along with four corresponding Electoral College votes, Florida gaining two seats, and Arizona, Idaho, Utah, North Carolina, and Georgia gaining one seat each.
The big loser on this map would be California, down four seats, to 48. Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania would each lose one seat. The net swing would be nine seats away from blue states and a gain of eight seats for red states. Plus one more seat each for the more politically divided purple states.
Some professional political shot-callers have begun to digest what this could mean. Sean Trende, senior election analyst for RealClearPolitics, has written that reapportionment along these lines would mean that, to win the presidency, Republicans need no longer carry any of the so-called “Blue Wall” states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Though they would have to hold some states that they could conceivably lose, including Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.
Projections for the map are based on the 2025 census population estimates that were released this January. The numbers don’t assume future gains from internal sorting. But as Americans continue to move, so will their districts.
“It wouldn’t shock me if California lost a fifth or sixth seat and if New York and Illinois lost a second,” Ryan James Girdusky, host of the iHeartRadio program It’s A Numbers Game with Ryan Girdusky, told the Washington Examiner, though he pointed out that “a lot of people aren’t moving because interest rates are too high.”
Florida, in particular, has had a “massive slowdown in migration, but these numbers could easily change,” he said. An economic downturn would be very likely to both hit several blue states extra hard and drive interest rates lower, making it less expensive for Americans to relocate.
Lower interest rates would also reverse the lock-in effect that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of Americans refinanced their homes at interest rates of 2% to 3%. They face much higher interest rates and monthly payments when they consider moving elsewhere. If that changes, their outlook toward moving might change as well.
Red states, blue baby steps
Current progressive thinking about how to address the country’s 2024 Electoral College Republican shift, which is only likely to become more locked in in the next decade, is to unpack right-of-center rhetoric and learn to tailor Democratic appeals to individual GOP voters.
In January, the New York Times reported on a progressive club in Brooklyn that is “one of several groups dedicated to helping liberal Americans empathize with, or at least comprehend, their conservative counterparts.” It was considered a major win when one 20-something club member survived Thanksgiving with conservative relatives.
The member had “found himself in a conversation with his Republican relative, who was telling him she disliked [NYC] Mayor Zohran Mamdani and liked President [Donald] Trump.” The New York Times reported that he “bristled” but kept his cool. Eventually, the two found common cause in their shared opposition to stock trading by sitting members of Congress of either party.
Whether or not he was aware of this, the earnest Brooklynite was following a script laid out by Thomas Frank in his 2004 book What’s the Matter With Kansas?, wherein the author argued that Republicans were using culture war wedge issues to distract middle and working class Americans from their real, economically progressive self-interest. It followed that Democrats needed to find ways past that rhetoric to open Republicans’ eyes. Mass economic migration, however, suggests that policy, not culture wars, may in fact be driving the shift.
Though many Americans moving from blue states to red ones might mention cultural considerations, there are countless practical pocketbook reasons as well. Republican-run states tend to have lower taxes, fewer building regulations, cheaper real estate and rental prices, and more favorable business environments than their Democrat-run counterparts.
One place where culture and commerce meet is that the whole state-level GOP policy mix often makes family formation more affordable. And those looking to start families in the wake of recent runaway inflation may be especially price sensitive.
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The Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index ranks Wyoming, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Alaska, Florida, Montana, Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, and Indiana as the top 10 states in descending order for tax competitiveness. Their five counterparts at the bottom of the list were Maryland, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, and New York.
All but one of the highest-ranking states on the Tax Competitiveness Index, New Hampshire, was carried by the Republican presidential ticket in the 2024 election. It’s likely no coincidence that several of these states are set to gain seats in the next reapportionment as well.
Jeremy Lott (@jeremylottdiary) is the author of several books, most recently The Three Feral Pigs and the Vegan Wolf.