Some Red State/Blue State Indicia

[chop2chip]

Sounds like San Francisco has lost more people than anywhere else in the US in recent memory, despite assurances here of how great a place it is.

1.2 million. Quite a drop.

Did San Francisco sink into the ocean?

[acesfull86]

Once their school board phases out the word “chief” and the healing can finally begin, I’m sure the SF population will rebound.

[sturg33]

They just need to raise taxes on the people still there

[Tapate50]

Lol I was assured by BL and goldy that was not the case

[msstate7]

They just need to raise taxes on the people still there

The problem is they'll move to a red state and vote the same way

[sturg33]

San Francisco had the single biggest city exodus.

Weird, huh

[chop2chip]

San Francisco had the single biggest city exodus.

Weird, huh

I imagine much of this is the corporate exodus. Tesla, Apple, Facebook, etc. all built huge campuses in Texas and North Carolina. Matt Taibbi had an amazing article on this last week.

[sturg33]

I imagine much of this is the corporate exodus. Tesla, Apple, Facebook, etc. all built huge campuses in Texas and North Carolina. Matt Taibbi had an amazing article on this last week.

Corporations leaving is a tell, too

[nsacpi]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...ted-trump.html

Given what we already knew about Trump’s base of support, it seemed likely that most of these emptying counties voted Republican in the last election. But how many, exactly? Mark Muro of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings ran the numbers for me.* He found that, in the 1,636 counties that shrank during the 2010s, the former president won a majority of votes in 90 percent of them. (Muro’s team had to exclude Alaska from its numbers because of a technical glitch.) If a corner of America is depopulating, it is almost certainly part of Trump country.

This is not to say that Trump country on the whole is in decline. The former president only received about 19 percent of his 74 million votes from counties with shrinking populations, according to Muro and his team’s analysis. Overall, the counties where he won added 7.8 million people during the previous decade. But Biden counties nearly doubled that total, expanding by 14.9 million individuals. Blue America is driving America’s population growth.

[nsacpi]

The breakdown between blue and red within Texas is especially interesting. Georgia too.

To look at presidential vote margins in a couple random counties.

Gwinnett: +60K for GOP in 2000, +79K for GOP in 2004, +29K for GOP in 2008, +27K for GOP in 2012, +20K for Dems in 2016, +85K for Dems in 2020

That's a killer trend in a very fast growing county. Maybe it won't be so bad when very poorly chosen one is not on the ticket.

Bexar:+30K for GOP in 2000, +50K for GOP in 2004, +29K for Dems in 2008, +23K for Dems in 2012, +79K for Dems in 2016, +140K for Dems in 2020

Counties like Gwinnett and Bexar are where the population growth (what remains of it in this country) is happening. I'm sure there is a very poorly chosen one effect that exaggerates the trends against the GOP in the past two elections.

[sturg33]

We are all well aware that the idiot leftists who flee their ****hole have no.ability to self reflect as to why they did

[sturg33]

I don't expect the same people who believed the gorgia voting bill was Jim Crow will be unable to comprehend that maybe they are part of the problems

[nsacpi]

We are all well aware that the idiot leftists who flee their ****hole have no.ability to self reflect as to why they did

Reflection is always a good thing. Data and analysis even better.

San Francisco population according to census data: 1980 679K, 1990 724K, 2000 777K, 2010 804K, 2020 874K. This growth has occurred in spite of an extremely restrictive building permitting process. It wasn't trying to grow like sunbelt cities. In fact its policies throughout this period can be characterized as anti-growth.

The last two years something happened. It is pretty obvious what. A pandemic. Plus the widespread adoption of work from home practices. Especially widespread in the tech industry. Especially widespread in Silicon Valley and the rest of Northern California. Why live in an expensive area close to the office if you no longer have to go there.

San Francisco has had a dysfunctional school board and city council for a very long time. For decades. It has had a big homeless population for decades. A big population of teenage runaways for decades. Insanely restrictive permitting processes for new housing for decades. And it's population grew throughout that time because of its charms and the growth spawned by Silicon Valley. So it will have to figure out how to reinvent itself after the pandemic and widespread adoption of working from home practices. Perhaps it will conclude that a smaller population works better for it.

[sturg33]

Funny how Florida didn't have a mass exodus after DeSantis was trying to kill people for two years

[sturg33]

A reminder that the communist mayor of SF said in October that the city has been destroyed

[chop2chip]

Corporations leaving is a tell, too

Yes. A far more important one, IMO.

[nsacpi]

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/cali...t-surplus.html

I think this is a tell too. Tax revenues have been very strong. Obviously the reliance on tax revenues from capital gains (and in particular IPOs) will bite somewhere down the line. But a budget surplus of almost $100 billion is something every other state would kill for.

[nsacpi]

Btw a year ago (April 2021) Texas' unemployment rate was 6.3% and California's 8.2%.

Now (April 2022) Texas is at 4.2% and California at 4.6%.

This convergence has happened even with the Texas economy presumably getting goosed by higher oil prices.

[sturg33]

Lol

[nsacpi]

In a strange way California on the one hand and Texas and Florida on the other should be happy they have each other. California (especially Northern California) is ambivalent about additional population growth. Florida and Texas welcome it and make policy to attract it. The people who choose to remain in California are happy to get richer while their neighbors move out. NIMBYism is stronger there than anywhere else. Those who have it made are not too anxious to share the spoils. It is not an attractive mindset (there are towns in Marin County that tear down highway signs so outsiders won't be able to find them). But it is what it is.