Demography is destiny.
Kamala Harris could count on winning California’s 54 electoral college votes as she campaigned for president, and the state’s voters delivered. In fact, California’s electoral votes were almost a quarter of the 226 she won nationwide, 44 short of what she needed to defeat Donald Trump.
Looking ahead, however, California’s clout in both presidential and congressional elections — and therefore in the rooms where post-election policy decisions are made — is shrinking. It’s a stark reminder of the old adage that demography drives destiny. Population growth began to slow in the late 1990s, thanks largely to out-migration of Southern California aerospace workers and their families as defense spending dried up after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
“California lost 433,000 people between July 2020 and July 2023,” the Public Policy Institute of California calculated. “Most of the loss occurred during the first year of the pandemic and was driven by a sharp rise in residents moving to other states. But fewer births, higher deaths and lower international migration also played a role.
It’s a major chunk of a wider shift of population, congressional seats and electoral votes from blue states — New York will also be a big loser — to red states such as Texas and Florida, whose economies are growing smartly and where housing is affordable.
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