Reapportionment Favors the Red States
This is what happens when you’re the fastest growing state with one of the friendliest business climates and the most job-producing economy: People vote with their feet and call you home — call it the Davy Crockett economy. The timing of all this, coming in a census year, makes Texas the big winner in the reapportionment to come.
States gaining Congressional seats: Arizona (1), Florida (2), Georgia (1), Nevada (1), South Carolina (1), Texas (4), Utah (1), Washington (1).
States losing Congressional seats: Illinois (1), Iowa (1), Louisiana (1), Massachusetts (1), Michigan (1), Missouri (1), New Jersey (1), New York (2), Ohio (2), Pennsylvania (1).
The colors denote how each voted in the 2008 presidential election. It’s not hard to detect trends here. The country continues to move toward the south and west. Voters are apparently fleeing more than the cold; the gainers tend to be the more conservative states, with the notable exception of Washington.
When it comes to the Texas redrawing, demography will dictate that at least one of these seats will be drawn in a majority Hispanic region. In past years that might have meant a definite Democratic pickup, but that’s less true after 2010, when voters elected a pair of Hispanic Republicans to Congress, replaced a liberal Democratic Hispanic state Rep. with a conservative Republican one in central Texas, and an elected Democratic state Rep. from the Rio Grande Valley just switched to the GOP. Nueces County also flipped to GOP control in 2010, which scrambles the calculations to some extent. The Texas gains also makes the race for speaker of the state House all the more important, since the House has a vital role to play in the map drawing process, and the current speaker is a bit more Democrat-friendly than his challengers.
The four new seats may also serve as a release valve for all the candidates who are currently jockeying to run for the Senate seat that may be vacated by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison if she chooses to retire at the end of her current term, which expires in 2013. There are currently five or six well-known Republican candidates who are interested in running for that seat; some of them could defect to less crowded House races depending on where the new seats are drawn.
Looking a bit more broadly, most of the gainers are 2008 McCain states, while the losers are Obama states (except LA and MO). I won’t belabor the obvious. The new maps are unhelpful to Obama and the Democrats since the net Electoral College change tilts toward Republicans.
What delicious irony.
The abortion states lose population and power. The save the planet by not creating little carbon footprint types lose population and power.
And just wait until Rubio becomes nationally known! In another astonishing stroke of fate, the REPUBLICANS have the charismatic Hispanic.
Reagan is smiling down on us today.
And I like to plug Allen West.
If I ever moved back to the States I would move from my east coast home to a western conservative leaning state,(possibly Texas) fed up with loony, left NYC and its loosey goosey leaders.
Absolutely.
Let’s hope the population shifts are not blue state parasites in search of healthier hosts!
My thought exactly: just because those Californians had to move to Texas doesn’t mean they’ve learned anything.
Texas is now about 70% conservative.
It can neutralize millions of liberal fools.
Don’t count on Texas too much if amnesty of illegal aliens goes through as planned.
Yet your former illegal aliens woudnt be as wacked-out as those that went straight to California.
Of course that red/blue state balance won’t mean much if the Republicans don’t nominate a first-rate candidate who can peel off Independents and moderate Democrats in the next election.
I’ll echo RJE’s concern. “Let’s hope the population shifts are not blue state parasites in search of healthier hosts!” Yep. The last thing states like Texas need are more liberals fleeing the wreckage they created while hoping to “do it right this time” in their new homes.
Sadly, that’s exactly what has happened here in Colorado. Anybody want a bunch of California transplants looking to screw up a new state? They keep moving here and voting for Diana DeGette.
Same thing happened to NC which helped elect Obama in 2008 and elected a Democrat to the Senate. Lefties either move to Red states as part of a plan to turn them Blue or are so darn stupid as to why their home states failed that they continue to vote for Democrats. They are like locusts.
The red states will probably be even more politically powerful in ten years. An increasing number of American citizens will most likely move to the South. This is especially true of those like California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. We who already live here must focus on converting these “immigrants” to red state values. We don’t want them screwing up our home areas with their failed blue state values. This is very worrisome.
Not to worry. You’ll get assistance from those of us who fled to safety here in the Lone Star State. The Dems policies destroyed my beloved state of New York. No way I will let that happen here!
Offer to take them to the range to zero their old M-4. What you don’t own one? OK, grab your pistol and we’ll go! What no pistol? We better just take you to the gun store then. No! No! I insist, I’ll drive.
LOL
Excellent idea!! Get their kids involved too. . . sometimes we can reach the parents through the children. The libs have been doing it for years.
The FED is now controlling both fiscal and monetary policy. It is stealthily transferring enormous wealth between states. The FCC and the EPA create and enforce their own laws, with little regard for congress.
We may yet see a California hi speed rail, payed for by New Jersey taxpayers and manufactured by union pension financed offshore jobs in emerging markets. (That’s where your “Build America Bonds” go).
Of course congress can always go “cap in hand” to the liberal stuffed Supreme Court.
Isn’t this a short-term benefit? I mean, could it be that all the population coming from blue states to red states will just propagate the liberal disease in their new home? If so, can this be prevented/corrected?
Folks should NOT be getting any particular idea’s of advantage from these Census indicators!
Arizona, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas, are becoming Snow Bird (Yankee) havens for both job opportunities and retirement. More notably are South Carolina’s coastal area, Georgia’s Coastal and Central metropolitan areas and Florida, now expanding well beyond the Southern areas. Additionally, the South has a very large slice of the defense economies along with increases in foreign and domestic automobile assembly and manufacturing…Right-To-Work States prime for the strong arm advance of labor unions by the migrating Yankees.
The Census is only indicating “migration trends” [from] those traditional socialist progressive stronghold States, [to] the Southern States…..most likely diluting the Souths now strong GOP base.
Folks should NOT be getting any particular idea’s of advantage from these Census indicators!
Arizona, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas, are becoming Snow Bird (Yankee) havens for both job opportunities and retirement. More notably are South Carolina’s coastal area, Georgia’s Coastal and Central metropolitan areas and Florida, now expanding well beyond the Southern areas. Additionally, the South has a very large slice of the defense economies along with increases in foreign and domestic automobile assembly and manufacturing…Right-To-Work States prime for the strong arm advance of labor unions by the migrating Yankees.
The Census is only indicating “migration trends” [from] those traditional socialist progressive stronghold States, [to] the Southern States…..most likely diluting the Souths now strong GOP base.
Yes, there is always the struggle to assimilate the new “immigrants”. They will tend to seek out their own and establish enclaves.
However, some will finally get that the reason they had to uproot was because of how they vote. Also, there has been a vast awakening of the People. Activism on the Right is awake. This will go a ways to get these folks’ thinking changed.
It is not guaranteed, but I like our chances.
I live in WA. Yes we gained a seat, and yes we vote blue, but that blue is concentrated around Seattle and Tacoma. The rest of the State is Red. There is little more they can do in the way of jury-rigging the districts here. It all comes down to the location of the population growth.
Whats your initial feel (and I mean in the political sense, though it would be tempting…) about the recently elected congresswoman Jaime (said like Jamie) Herrera from the Vancouver area? Is she another lost Mexican or she a ray of hope? One scenario in WA’s redistricting could be she gets “packed” with the run-down barrio-ish areas of Pasco-Richland and Yakima and hence becomes sort of a Diaz Balzart RINO. I hope not; she could be the next JC Watts or even better the next Gary Franks.
Don’t get too excited about Texas adding new seats. I predict that the redistricting will be a mess. Hispanics are wanting a bunch more seats. On the TV news last night and in the Dallas Morning News today the trumpet call is for many more Hispanic seats. At least in Dallas County the Hispanics will vote Democratic. The gist of the Hispanics interviewed was that now they could get a bunch more seats and thus much more money from the federal government for Hispanic causes.
The liberals want to turn Texas blue. With Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, and the threat of amnesty for illegals, it may not be that far-fetched. Additionally, let’s not forget fraudulent voting. ACORN’s newest iterations, SEIU, and the Black Panthers are comin’ to town. Concerned law-abiding conservatives can take nothing for granted and need to become involved in community activism of our own, including True the Vote.
According to Larry Sabato the census statistics also indicate that there is a continuing intrastate migration to the faster growing (and more solidly red) exurbs and away from the cities and immediate suburbs. This will also aid the GOP during the redistricting battle.