Elite Democrats threaten to be cast into oblivion by America’s new upstarts

Long-term demographic and economic trends are moving power away from blue to red states. Kamala Harris’ party can’t fight history

Much ink has been spilled – metaphorically at least – over how American politics has been nationalised to an unprecedented degree. Now people even choose to move based on politics, which makes more relevant the sharp regional divides, one reason why the candidates are spending their money and energy in only a handful of states.
This was not the case back when many states, even my adopted home of California, had a vibrant two party system. Today, most regions are increasingly monolithic, as people tend to move to states compatible with their ideological bent. Forty states now endure “trifecta” status, with one-party control of all branches of government, up from around 20 as recently as 2008.
In the past, Democrats could win elections, even at the presidential level, in the South, the current base of the Republicans, as well as in states such as Utah and Montana. After all, both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton came from Dixie and also had some allies in Congress of a similar disposition. Today, the ranks of moderate – and politically savvy – Democrats in the South are down basically to a handful.
The Democrat base now lies in the if anything even more politically homogeneous West Coast and Northeast. Apart from Maryland’s Larry Hogan, there is not a single prominent Republican in either region; in all these states, the Congressional delegation tends to be overwhelmingly Democratic. The rise of Donald Trump seems to have accelerated the pace of change, wiping out the last vestiges of East Coast-style moderate Republicanism.
In New York, California, and Illinois, the three big Democratic states, Kamala Harris is up by as much as 20 points and never less than 15. At the same time, in the two big GOP states – Texas and Florida – Trump is ahead by comfortable, albeit closer, margins.
This regional divide is not exactly healthy for the overall unity of the country. More than anything, it reprises the long-standing conflict between established elites and wannabe, often less well-groomed, challengers. As the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun noted, there are always conflicts between rougher, more aggressive forces on the fringe and settled peoples living in urban centres.
Viewed this way, regions like the South, mountain states like Utah, and Arizona are all involved in an attempt to take down the historically rich areas of the Northeast and California. Although all elite states suffer from expanding inequality, they remain, on average, the wealthiest and are home to the most expensive neighbourhoods. Massive wealth accumulation matters, and brings enormous advantages, both politically and socially.
But the nomads are scoping out the walled citadel. The fastest growth in jobs, including in manufacturing and business services, has occurred mostly in places like Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix and Salt Lake City. This year, salary growth hotspots are almost entirely in red states.
The momentum is picking up. Last year, the biggest upsurge in new business formation took place in the Deep South, Texas and the Desert Southwest, while the economies of New York and the West Coast lagged. Texas and Florida are now the country’s high-growth hotspots and are also attracting the most tech workers, while Dallas is seeking to surpass Chicago as a financial centre and is anxious to take on Wall Street as well.
The demographic shifts are even more critical. Last year, all five of the cities with the biggest growth were in the South or Nevada. People are moving decisively to lower cost, and generally less dense, regions not only in the Southeast but also in the western interior. Since 2000, the big gainers in domestic migration have been Florida, Texas, Arizona, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Nevada.
Other groups, like affluent young professionals, minorities, immigrants and, perhaps most critically, families are also migrating to the red bastions. Birth rates tend to be higher in the reddest areas and lowest in the deepest blue.
At the same time, there’s also a movement of older, affluent migrants from the North and California to lower tax, lower cost states. This works massively to the financial benefit of states like Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Florida, and Texas, as well as Tennessee and the Carolinas, all of which are receiving billions in capital from these transfers.
Between 2019 and 2023, there was a shift of some $191 billion from blue to red states. The losers include Tim Walz’s Minnesota, where the policy agenda mimics California but under much less favourable conditions. It has haemorrhaged $5 billion from fleeing residents as its labour force has shrunk.  
Of course it may take time for these shifts to solidify. After the last census, Texas gained two seats in the House, Florida, Montana and North Carolina – as well as blue-leaning Oregon and Colorado –  gained one, while New York, California and Illinois all lost seats, and electoral votes. If current trends continue, the red states in 2030 will have 30 more seats than in the 1970s. Arizona and Georgia, usually red-leaning states, are expected to gain, as are the more deeply red Carolinas, Tennessee, Utah and Idaho.
None of this means that Trump will win this time. A coalition of the elite states with enough Rust Belt locales and perhaps younger, suburban female voters could take Harris over the top. But even so, she seems unlikely to become another Abraham Lincoln, who reshaped the US, but a modern James Buchanan, the hapless Democrat who did little to stop secession and earned a place in the hall of forgotten presidents.
Until the Democrats learn to win in the rising states, they will continue to fight against history, consigning themselves, like the long-departed Federalists, to being the snobby opponents of the up and coming. The American future will be ever more in the red states, and this will be the key field that Democrats need to assault if they do not want to be cast off to oblivion.
Joel Kotkin is presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas