Millions Are Fleeing Blue States, and It’s Not for the Sunshine

It’s the weather, stupid.

That’s one of the left’s ready responses when confronted with the fact that millions of people are moving from blue states to red states, economist Stephen Moore says in a new PragerU video.

While acknowledging that weather has long explained why people move west and south, Moore points to the state that pokes holes in that argument today: California.

Warm weather isn’t all the Golden State offers prospective residents. Moore mentions its other appeals: beaches, mountains, top-tier universities, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and a productive economy. So why have nearly 2 million more people left California for other states than arrived since 2012? For the same reasons that New York lost a net of more than 2 million and Illinois nearly 1 million from 2012 to 2024, according to Census Bureau estimates.

It's the taxes, stupid. Florida, Tennessee, and Texas don’t tax wage income at the state level. California and New York, meanwhile, are near the top of the list of highest state income tax rates.

The Democratic Socialists of America would say we shouldn't shed any tears over top 1 percenters like Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin deciding to leave California, but when wealthy people leave a state, their taxable income goes with them. Moore says it's not just billionaires and millionaires who suffer in high-tax states: "Taxes affect small business owners, young families trying to buy a house, retirees trying to make their savings last." 

It's the poor education and high crime, stupid. Leftists like to say that more government spending will lead to safer streets and better schools. Moore explains why that's not the case: 

From 2000 to 2024, New York’s per capita government spending quadrupled compared to Florida’s. You’d expect then New York to be cleaner, safer, and [to have] better public schools than Florida. But that’s not the reality. By most measures, while taking far less of its citizens' money, Florida delivers better municipal services than its high tax counterpart and its educational outcomes are equal, if not better.

It's the inequality and uneven law enforcement, stupid. Income inequality is worse in New York than in Florida, and in blue states the gap shows up in how the law is enforced, too. Michael Shellenberger describes a progressive Los Angeles that is all but lawless in certain parts:

In wealthy neighborhoods, the law is still enforced. In poor and working-class neighborhoods, it is not. If you torch a car in Beverly Hills, you’re arrested. If you do it in East LA while shouting political slogans, you’re "engaging in protest." This two-tiered enforcement is not progressive. It is segregation by another name. It creates one set of expectations for the politically connected and another for the disposable. And in that framework, working people, especially immigrants, families, and hourly wage earners, are abandoned. They are the ones who walk their kids past open-air drug markets. They are the ones whose shops are looted and whose cars are stolen. They are the ones who call 911 and wait, and wait, and wait.

It's the affordability, stupid. Why is everything so darn expensive in blue states? Moore offers one reason: 

Let’s look at energy prices. Eight of the 10 most expensive states for electricity were blue states, while nine of the 10 cheapest were red states. Among the large states, electricity prices in blue states were almost double those in red states. And higher electricity costs raised the price of everything: rent, transportation, groceries.

Moore says that because of our federal system, we can treat the states as “laboratories of democracy” and study their successes and failures in taxing, regulating, spending, and governing. And the best way to grade them? "Watch where Americans decide to live and work," he says.

It's not cheap to move out of state, yet from 2012 to 2024, Florida gained a net 1.7 million-plus residents, Texas 1.5 million-plus, and Tennessee 400,000-plus.

     Related: The Video Gavin Newsom Doesn't Want You to See

Roger L. Simon, a PJ Media co-founder, is one of the many Californians who decided to leave for the Volunteer State. He moved in 2018 after living in California since 1968, and wrote about it in his book American Refugees: The Untold Story of the Mass Exodus From Blue States to Red States. He had no regrets when he wrote a post titled "Thank God I left California" on his Substack in 2025, in which he said, "The leadership of California is a litany of some of the most immoral politicians in the country, every one of them a hypocritical fake: Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, Sen. Adam Schiff, Rep. Maxine Waters, and former VP Kamala Harris, among a raft of malignant narcissists in a one-party state."

In the upcoming midterms, voters should ask whether the records of Democratic candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico, and Peggy Flanagan show the same self-serving politics Simon describes in California.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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