
Texas Becoming a Magnet for Conservatives Fleeing Liberal States Like California - drfuchs
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/27/546391430/texas-becoming-a-magnet-for-conservatives-fleeing-liberal-states-like-california
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alextheparrot
This article seems to be completely misrepresenting Texas's own projections,
which they cite in the article. Texas is expecting to see an increasing influx
of Hispanic residents (10+ million more Hispanic residents by 2050) [0], while
all non-hispanic groups see much more modest increases in population.

The US census published that, in 2015, 65,000 people moved from California to
Texas while 41,000 people moved from Texas to California [1]. While this is a
meaningful difference, especially given that California has about 10 million
more people, it isn't the mass-exodus of Republicans that I've been seeing as
the narrative from NPR and Vice lately (I assume other news outlets are also
running stories about this?).

If this trend continues, we should expect roughly 720,000 people (30*24,000),
plus some fudge-factor to adjust for population increases across the board.
Given Texas's own estimates, I'm going to assume these are mostly hispanic
migrants, which have also tended to be more democratic leaning [2]. The
conclusion seems to be that Texas may start moving more liberal in the next 30
years driven primarily by hispanic migrant voters, not that conservatives will
find a continued safe-haven there.

[0]
[http://demographics.texas.gov/Resources/Publications/2014/20...](http://demographics.texas.gov/Resources/Publications/2014/2014-11_ProjectionBrief.pdf)

[1] [https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-
series/demo/geograph...](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-
series/demo/geographic-mobility/state-to-state-migration.html)

[2] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/15/unlike-
other...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/15/unlike-other-
latinos-about-half-of-cuban-voters-in-florida-backed-trump/)

~~~
dogma1138
You assume that Hispanics are "liberal", that isn't exactly correct.

They are quite conservative on many issues like religion, general economic
policy, abortion, and anything with "social" in the name.

They are "liberal" or to be more exact vote democrats mostly because of a
single issue - immigration.

If the Republican party will do a 180 (or even come with a reasonable plan, or
heck just an new image since both under Clinton and Obama deportations were
higher than at previous and following republican presidents) on that single
issue they can win the majority of the Hispanic vote in many states.

~~~
alextheparrot
Pew's search on hispanic issues seems to indicate they favor liberal economic
issues (Health care, social security, management of the federal government)
[0]. Painting hispanics as a group that only cares about immigration is far
too broad a brush.

These voters are the democratic party's to lose - if they are not lost we may
see Texas start to move more liberal instead of being the conservative
stronghold which the article tries to imply it is.

[0] www.people-press.org/2016/07/07/6-hispanic-voters-and-the-2016-election

------
knolan
As a European looking on, the US political landscape is increasingly bizarre.

I wonder do Americans view us in the same way?

~~~
Turing_Machine
Just my personal take -- I can't speak for Americans in general.

From my perspective, European politics has never really gotten away from the
idea that there should be a ruling class and a ruled class. What those classes
are called, and how one becomes a member of them, has changed over time, but
whether you call it "the nobility" or "the politburo" or "the EU", the idea
that there is a ruling class who make decisions with little or no
accountability to the ruled class appears to always be there.

Unfortunately, we seem to be headed down that road ourselves. Pity, that.

The mistake most Europeans (and many Americans) seem to make is attempting to
map American politics onto European notions of "right" and "left", so you get
people doing bizarre things like equating U.S. libertarians with Nazis
(because they're both supposedly "right wing", despite having absolutely
nothing in common with each other).

My sense is that the difference between European "right" and "left" wings is
the difference between being ruled by communist bureaucrats or being ruled by
large property owners (nobles or rich people).

Some of us here don't like either of those ideologies. :-)

------
panic
This article doesn't provide enough data to support the conclusion it makes.
They link to a report of population projections, but the report doesn't
mention California (or any other state) at all. For all we know, just as many
conservative Texans could be moving to California as there are Californians
moving the other way, and the real trend is just an improved economy in both
states -- or any number of other explanations.

~~~
alextheparrot
While I mentioned this in another comment, the US census has the net migration
between California and Texas as about +20,000 net per year moving to Texas in
2015 [0]. I believe the narrative is wrong, but there does seem to be movement
towards Texas.

[0] [https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-
series/demo/geograph...](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-
series/demo/geographic-mobility/state-to-state-migration.html)

------
RickJWag
California has an appealing history. But for today's living (including taxes),
Texas seems pretty appealing.

