Droves of Californians fled to Republican Texas. The blue wave puts them in a political quandary
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Set us as preferred Did California help Texas turn blue?One of the biggest stories of this month’s Democratic sweep in the midterms is that a very red Texas elected a Democratic U.S.Senator and governor.
Pundits cite many theories for the surprising results: Anger over the Iran war, high gas prices, Trump fatigue and data centers.But did California’s high home prices and the state’s historic exodus play a role? Experts doubt it.In fact, some Californians who moved to Texas are actually concerned about the blue wave.Many presume that those arriving from California must be much more liberal than the average Texan, said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.But “a significant share of the Californians transplanting to Texas tend to be moderate to conservative in their views,” he said.For years, Californians fled to Texas in droves.
About 100,000 people made the move in 2022 alone, and many were looking not just for a lower cost of living but also a state that reflected their conservative political outlook.Nearly half of those Californians who moved to Arizona or Texas during the California exodus in recent years identified as conservative or very conservative, according to a Stanford University study.The Public Policy Institute of California found that those who leave the state often go to states that share their political beliefs: “Californians leaving for Republican states are much more likely to be Republican than Democratic, compared to Californians as a whole, while those leaving for Democratic states are more likely to be Democratic than Republican,” the PPIC wrote.
California A Times analysis of U-Haul data shows that young Los Angeles residents are more often leaving for other California cities than older Angelenos who are more likely to leave th...