What do the recent 2010 census figures reveal? Among other things, it revealed changes in state populations resulting in the reapportionment of Congressional seats.
If one takes a look at which states made the gains, what underlying characteristic do they seem to share in common? Answer: That Americans are migrating away from states with high income taxes to states that have no state income taxes and that have a more business-friendly environment. Translation: Americans (including liberals) are showing a preference for living in states with a conservative model for governance that creates prosperity than they are for liberal states that creates poverty and wrecks economies (Note: Washington may be a blue state; but its populace just voted to remain free of having a personal or corporate income tax).
Michael Medved observes the following population pattern in regards to recent census figures and interprets what it means for liberalism as a governing philosophy:
The most left-leaning states in the union (New York, Massachusetts, Illinois) lost Congressional seats while the most conservative states (Texas, Utah, Idaho, Florida) made major gains. Only nine states don’t impose a state income tax and seven of those nine grew faster than the national average while the other two- South Dakota and New Hampshire- boasted the fastest growth in their respective regions. If liberalism works at all as a governing philosophy, then why are Americans uprooting their lives to flee its practical impact?
Texas’ diversified economy, business-friendly regulations and low taxes have attracted not only immigrants but substantial inflow from the other 49 states. As a result, the 2010 reapportionment gives Texas four additional House seats. In contrast, California gets no new House seats, for the first time since it was admitted to the Union in 1850.
There’s a similar lesson in the fact that Florida gains two seats in the reapportionment and New York loses two.
This leads to a second point, which is that growth tends to be stronger where taxes are lower. Seven of the nine states that do not levy an income tax grew faster than the national average. The other two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, had the fastest growth in their regions, the Midwest and New England.
Altogether, 35 percent of the nation’s total population growth occurred in these nine non-taxing states, which accounted for just 19 percent of total population at the beginning of the decade.
Barone concludes what it means politically:
The net effect of the reapportionment was to add six House seats and electoral votes to the states John McCain carried in 2008 and to subtract six House seats and electoral votes from the states Barack Obama carried that year. Similarly, the states carried by George W. Bush in 2004 gained six seats and the states carried by John Kerry lost six.
That’s not an enormous change. But it’s part of a long-term trend that has reshaped the nation’s politics. If you go back to the 1960 election, when the electoral votes were based on the 1950 census, you will find that John Kennedy won 303 electoral votes. But the states he carried then will have only 272 electoral votes in 2012, a bare majority. And without Texas, which he narrowly carried, the Kennedy states would have only 234 electoral votes.
The bottom line: You need a lot more than the Northeast and the industrial Midwest to get elected president these days.
And to control a majority in the House of Representatives. Thanks to unexpectedly large gains in state legislatures, Republicans stand to control the redistricting process in 18 states with 204 House districts, while Democrats will control it in only seven states with 49 districts. That doesn’t guarantee continued Republican majorities, but it’s probably worth 10 to 15 seats.
Liberalism as a governing economic philosophy of ponzism doesn’t work. It is the antithesis for the creation of economic prosperity. Just ask Europe.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
Now you see why liberals are so stoked on the idea of dumping the Electoral College…..fast!
Some states are in the process of throwing their own voters under the bus.
They will give its Electoral College votes NOT to the candidate that wins their own elections, but to the candidate that wins the MAJORITY of the national popular vote!
http://www.blueoregon.com/2011/01/will-oregon-legislature-help-abolish-electoral-college/
Anyone who has looked at 3-d maps of votes in a Presidential election will quickly realize a plan like this gives the election to the person the East and West Coasts want.
Obama in 2008:
http://www.wmhartnett.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/08-dem-simple.png
McCain in 2008:
http://www.wmhartnett.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/08-rep-simple.png
The only reason JFK won was he had Lyndon Baines Johnson (OF TEXAS) on the ticket with him.
No questions my friend. I saved the photo for use someday.
As a Footnote the CENSUS in past years created the Gerrymandered strongholds of more than a dozen Members of the BCC that like Idi Amin are Congressmen/Women for Life. No BS here, just Facts to consider.
Entitlement sinkholes.
@Old Trooper 2:
OT2,
That explains why, in CA, where the state legislators had single-digit approval ratings, not one single incumbent was voted out!!!
In fact, CA is a mostly fairly right-leaning state (voting population-wise) BUT, not one state-wide office is held by a Republican.
As the state falls Dems will have no one to blame but themselves.
@Nan G: Free Ice Cream is Great until it runs out…
Good news nationally for Red States to be growing. Naturally conservatives must be on the watch for those new residents to bring with them their liberal voting ways. Funny how many who voted for what they got, want to leave the mess they made. How many of these migrant liberals are going to change the way they vote just because they move to a conservative state. Doubtful. Stupid is as stupid does.
@Old Trooper 2:
Melted the words right out of my mouth
@Old Trooper 2:
Representation isn’t about representing citizens any more …
@Nan G:
I think California and other states in the SW could be lost to Republicans, because of their stand on illegal immigration. Following the ice cream analogy, the Dems are promising to reward them for their illegal act, by making it legal … Pretty hard to resist that kind of bribery. Good for a party, bad for a country of laws.
Nan G,
Using your line of reasoning how do you explain 2 border Texas traditionally democrat and heavily Hispanic congressional districts bouncing their democrat congresscritters? Most Hispanics born here or here legally do not care one bit about illegal aliens. Many polls prove that fact too.The Hispanic vote being motivated by amnesty is a another leftist media constantly recited template that has little basis in reality.
California’s democrat strongholds are in the Bay area and its affluent suburbs not in the more heavily Hispanic Central Valley or Southern California.
Old One has it right . I live in Nueces County , Texas and we voted out one Rep Solomon Ortiz because of his support for Obamacare and illegals. We have a Republican rep for the first time in 27 yrs. Ain’t it great. Only in America!
I wish KY and especially Louisville would wake up. For over 20 years we have let Liberals waste millions of dollars every year on projects that either never materialize or fail. Guess who they voted in after the mayor of 14 years finally stepped down because of several Federal Regulators kept finding undocumented payements for work never done……another Democrat. Go figure.
Margret Thacher once said that …” Spending other people’s money is fine until you run out…”
Minute Man 26,
I was a social studies teacher(Government & Economics) in California for 40 years in three different high schools that were respectively 50%, 20%, & 82% Hispanic. I can tell you that the Hispanic students I had contact with (numbering in the thousands over forty years) had no use for illegals and gave not a toot about immigration.
The boys were overwhelmingly natural born social conservatives, strongly pro-strong defense, and anti-moonbat. The girls like women in this country were somewhat prone to loving big brother government far more than the guys .
Were the braindead California Republican organization not truly deserving of the title of The Party of Stupid no lesss than 65% of the males would be voting republican along with 40% of the Hispanic distaff I met in the classroom.
Remember nearly a 1/4 of all Hispanics in the US are Puerto Ricans who are birthright citizens of many generations who have no connection with the immigration issue whatsoever. I never met a Cuban-American in the classroom who was a liberal and damned few of the Salvadorean here legally had any use for marxism so much adored in todays democorrupt party.
The Republicans nationwide need to wake up like they obviously have in Texas and tap a natural reservoir of conservative support among Hispanics that are here legally and most certainly those American born. If conservatives and republicans would cease swallowing the marxstream media’s mantra of Hispanics wanting amnesty and unfettered immigration all of us would be winners.
Most voters don’t care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was counted and mattered to their candidate.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls
By state (electoral college votes), by political affiliation, support for a national popular vote in recent polls has been:
Alaska (3)- 78% among (Democrats), 66% among (Republicans), 70% among Nonpartisan voters, 82% among Alaska Independent Party voters, and 69% among others.
Arkansas (6)- 88% (D), 71% (R), and 79% (Independents).
California (55)– 76% (D), 61% (R), and 74% (I)
Colorado (9)- 79% (D), 56% (R), and 70% (I).
Connecticut (7)- 80% (D), 67% (R), and 71% others
Delaware (3)- 79% (D), 69% (R), and 76% (I)
District of Columbia (3)- 80% (D), 48% (R), and 74% of (I)
Idaho(4) – 84% (D), 75% (R), and 75% others
Florida (29)- 88% (D), 68% (R), and 76% others
Iowa (6)- 82% (D), 63% (R), and 77% others
Kentucky (8)- 88% (D), 71% (R), and 70% (I)
Maine (4) – 85% (D), 70% (R), and 73% others
Massachusetts (11)- 86% (D), 54% (R), and 68% others
Michigan (16)- 78% (D), 68% (R), and 73% (I)
Minnesota (10)- 84% (D), 69% (R), and 68% others
Mississippi (6)- 79% (D), 75% (R), and 75% Others
Nebraska (5)- 79% (D), 70% (R), and 75% Others
Nevada (5)- 80% (D), 66% (R), and 68% Others
New Hampshire (4)- 80% (D), 57% (R), and 69% (I)
New Mexico (5)- 84% (D), 64% (R), and 68% (I)
New York (29) – 86% (D), 66% (R), 78% Independence Party members, 50% Conservative Party members, 100% Working Families Party members, and 7% Others
North Carolina (15)- 75% liberal (D), 78% moderate (D), 76% conservative (D), 89% liberal (R), 62% moderate (R) , 70% conservative (R), and 80% (I)
Ohio (18)- 81% (D), 65% (R), and 61% Others
Oklahoma (7)- 84% (D), 75% (R), and 75% others
Oregon (7)- 82% (D), 70% (R), and 72% (I)
Pennsylvania (20)- 87% (D), 68% (R), and 76% (I)
Rhode Island (4)- 86% liberal (D), 85% moderate (D), 60% conservative (D), 71% liberal (R), 63% moderate (R), 35% conservative (R), and 78% (I),
South Dakota (3)- 84% (D), 67% (R), and 75% others
Utah (6)- 82% (D), 66% (R), and 75% others
Vermont (3)- 86% (D); 61% (R), and 74% Others
Virginia (13)- 79% liberal (D), 86% moderate (D), 79% conservative (D), 76% liberal (R), 63% moderate (R), and 54% conservative (R), and 79% Others
Washington (12)- 88% (D), 65% (R), and 73% others
West Virginia (5)- 87% (D), 75% (R), and 73% others
Wisconsin (10)- 81% (D), 63% (R), and 67% (I)
Wyoming (3) – 77% (D), 66% (R), and 72% (I)
http://nationalpopularvote.com/pages/polls.php
You might be interested to know:
There actually is a Democratic partisan advantage in the least-populous states under the current winner-take-all system.
The low-population red states are redder than the low-population blue states are blue.
Specifically, the Republican popular-vote margins in the reliably Republican six low-population states were
● Alaska–64%,
● Idaho–69%,
● Montana–61%,
● North Dakota–64%,
● South Dakota–61%, and
● Wyoming–70%.
In contrast, the Democrats carried three of their reliable low-population states (Delaware, Hawaii, and Maine) with just 54% of the vote and effortlessly harvested their electoral votes. A 46%–54% margin is generally viewed as the boundary that places a state safely out of reach for the opposition during a typical presidential campaign.
In addition, the Democrats carried two more of their low-population states (Vermont and Rhode Island) with only 60% of the vote (that is, a smaller margin than any of the six reliably Republican low-population states). The District of Columbia is the only low-population jurisdiction where the Democrats regularly win presidential races with a high margin.
A large number of Republican votes were left on the table because of the high margins of victory in the six reliably Republican low-population states, compared to the relatively modest winning margins in the six regularly Democratic low-population states. Under a national popular vote in which every vote would be equal, this wastage would not occur.
● Wyoming’s 96,509-vote margin exceeded Vermont’s 62,911-vote margin.
● Alaska’s 65,812-vote margin exceeded Delaware’s 28,356-vote margin.
● North Dakota’s 85,336-vote margin exceeded Hawaii’s 37,209-vote margin.
● Montana’s 92,110-vote margin exceeded Rhode Island’s 85,753-vote margin.
● South Dakota’s 83,320-vote margin exceeded Maine’s 65,017-vote margin.
● Idaho’s 227,334-vote Republican margin exceeded the District of Columbia’s 164,869-vote margin.
If the boundaries of the 13 least-populous states had been drawn recently, there would be accusations that they were a Democratic gerrymander.
Similarly, there is no significant partisan advantage in favor of the Republican Party even if one considers the 25 least-populous states (i.e., those with seven or fewer electoral votes). The Republicans won 13 of the 25 least-populous states in 2008 while the Democrats won 12. The Republicans won 58 electoral votes in the 25 least-populous states while the Democrats won 57.
In 2004, 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).