The Great Conservative Migration

By John Green

The results of the 2020 census are in, and the Democrats are looking very nervous.  It turns out that red states are growing and blue states are shrinking.  Red States are gaining three congressional seats while blue states are losing three.  In fact, California will lose a seat for the first time ever.  Legislative and Electoral College power is shifting in favor of the Republicans.
 
But the propaganda ministry is trying to convince us that this is all good news for the crime family that calls itself the Democrats.  The narrative is that liberals are moving from blue states to red states and will eventually turn them blue.  But as we’ve learned, if the talking heads are talking, they’re most likely lying.  So, let’s examine what they’re saying.
 
My home state of Idaho is a perfect example of this migration.  It has experienced a 17% growth in its population over the past 10 years — the second highest in the nation (Utah was first).  For most of the decade, the growth rate hovered around 1.5% annually.  However, in 2020 the rate spiked to 2.9% — almost twice the normal rate.  Does it have anything to do with California being nearby?  Maybe rampant homelessness, spiking crime rates, and oppressive COVID restrictions weren’t that popular with Californians after all.  It seems that locking the state down didn’t work any better for California than it did for Cuba — though an escape from Newsomstan is a bit safer than giving the one-finger goodbye to the Castros.
 
A look at Idaho’s growth data reveals that California was indeed the big culprit — but not alone.  Based on 2018 migration data from the census bureau:

• 26.3% came from California.  If Nevada were a body of water, we’d have had a boat-people crisis.
• 18.7% came from Washington state.
• 8.3% came from Utah.  It must be due to Romney embarrassment.
• 5.9% came from Oregon.  Even legal cannabis didn’t convince people that Antifa is mostly peaceful.
• 5.2% came from Texas.  Texas is also growing and it’s starting to burst at the seams.

In fact, my wife and I were part of the migration.  We lived for 36 years in American Siberia — otherwise known as Minnesota.  Politics in Minnesota has always been dominated by the Democrats.  However, in recent years it has taken a decidedly radical turn.  When Keith Ellison — a former supporter of the Nation of Islam and attorney to cop killers — was elected attorney general, we knew it was time to leave.  This anti-Semite, race-baiter, and woman abuser was now the state’s top law enforcement official.  What could possibly go wrong?  One year after we left, the George Floyd riots happened.  That’s what could go wrong.
 



 
We moved to the small town of Star, Idaho.  I call Star the nicest refugee camp in the world. It’s a community of new housing subdivisions, wonderful schools (that don’t teach Critical Race Theory), numerous churches, and friendly people.  It has also doubled in population in the last 10 years — almost entirely from west-coast transplants.
 
With this level of growth, is Idaho turning blue?  It doesn’t feel like it.  We’ve made a number of friends here, and most are recovering Californians.  Virtually all are more conservative than me — and I clearly meet the DHS definition of a right-wing extremist (I still believe the Constitution means what it says).  I even saw a pickup truck, with California plates, flying a “Trump 2024 – Screw Your Feelings” flag — except the word wasn’t “screw.”  It took me a while to get used to it but wearing a MAGA hat in public won’t get you mugged and a Trump bumper sticker probably won’t get your car vandalized.  The place simply doesn’t feel like it’s sliding into leftwing lunacy.
 
But, apart from feelings, what does the hard data show?  In 2016 Donald Trump won Idaho with 59.2% of the vote.  After adding tens of thousands of new residents, mostly from California and Washington, the Donald won Idaho with 63.9% of the vote in 2020 — and there wasn’t even the slightest hint of election fraud here.  With our supposed slide into the embrace of Democrats, Trump increased his margin of the vote by almost 5%.
 
Between 2013 and 2019, the percentage of voters who registered as Republican went from 32.4% to 50.8%.  Democrats added 52,300 voters to their rolls, but Republicans added a whopping 200,000 to theirs!  Idahoans are becoming more engaged in politics, and their political proclivity is clearly conservative.

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