Texas Becoming a Magnet for Conservatives Fleeing Liberal States Like California | Hacker News Reader

Texas Becoming a Magnet for Conservatives Fleeing Liberal States Like California

npr.org

15 pointsdrfuchs12 comments

This article seems to be completely misrepresenting Texas's own projections, which they cite in the article. Texas is expecting to see an increasing influx of Hispanic residents (10+ million more Hispanic residents by 2050) [0], while all non-hispanic groups see much more modest increases in population.

The US census published that, in 2015, 65,000 people moved from California to Texas while 41,000 people moved from Texas to California [1]. While this is a meaningful difference, especially given that California has about 10 million more people, it isn't the mass-exodus of Republicans that I've been seeing as the narrative from NPR and Vice lately (I assume other news outlets are also running stories about this?).

If this trend continues, we should expect roughly 720,000 people (30*24,000), plus some fudge-factor to adjust for population increases across the board. Given Texas's own estimates, I'm going to assume these are mostly hispanic migrants, which have also tended to be more democratic leaning [2]. The conclusion seems to be that Texas may start moving more liberal in the next 30 years driven primarily by hispanic migrant voters, not that conservatives will find a continued safe-haven there.

[0] http://demographics.texas.gov/Resources/Publications/2014/20...

[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geograph...

[2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/15/unlike-other...

The conservative values may predominate for longer than the conservative majority, due to voter suppression and gerrymandering by the state.

As one example, I read an article describing a program to reduce voter registration in Texas (this was maybe 2 years ago, so my memory will be imperfect). Someone registering voters has to be from the same county or district as the voter, and has to follow a sizeable book of regulations. Violations are felonies. This makes voter registration drives very difficult.

These tactics and others like them are not novel; they existed before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After the Supreme Court in 2013 effectively ended the supervision of states by the federal government, the tactics returned in many of the formerly segregated states.

You assume that Hispanics are "liberal", that isn't exactly correct.

They are quite conservative on many issues like religion, general economic policy, abortion, and anything with "social" in the name.

They are "liberal" or to be more exact vote democrats mostly because of a single issue - immigration.

If the Republican party will do a 180 (or even come with a reasonable plan, or heck just an new image since both under Clinton and Obama deportations were higher than at previous and following republican presidents) on that single issue they can win the majority of the Hispanic vote in many states.

Pew's search on hispanic issues seems to indicate they favor liberal economic issues (Health care, social security, management of the federal government) [0]. Painting hispanics as a group that only cares about immigration is far too broad a brush.

These voters are the democratic party's to lose - if they are not lost we may see Texas start to move more liberal instead of being the conservative stronghold which the article tries to imply it is.

[0] www.people-press.org/2016/07/07/6-hispanic-voters-and-the-2016-election

As a European looking on, the US political landscape is increasingly bizarre.

I wonder do Americans view us in the same way?

Hmm, "bizarre". I don't think so. More, "bureaucratic" on average.

Things which might have seemed "bizarre" to American observers of Europe in recent years: the nativist parties in the Netherlands and France, the superstition of the Italian court system in the Amanda Knox trial, Boris Johnson...

But those are all supporting characters, whereas I imagine that European observers of the US are focused on our central drama.

To me, it seems as if Europe (Germany and the UK, mostly) have drifted too far left. I'm surprised by what Churchill and Thatcher's country seems to be today. That may be my own prejudices and limited information. Most of what I know of Europe comes from limited visits and reading of American publications.

Just my personal take -- I can't speak for Americans in general.

From my perspective, European politics has never really gotten away from the idea that there should be a ruling class and a ruled class. What those classes are called, and how one becomes a member of them, has changed over time, but whether you call it "the nobility" or "the politburo" or "the EU", the idea that there is a ruling class who make decisions with little or no accountability to the ruled class appears to always be there.

Unfortunately, we seem to be headed down that road ourselves. Pity, that.

The mistake most Europeans (and many Americans) seem to make is attempting to map American politics onto European notions of "right" and "left", so you get people doing bizarre things like equating U.S. libertarians with Nazis (because they're both supposedly "right wing", despite having absolutely nothing in common with each other).

My sense is that the difference between European "right" and "left" wings is the difference between being ruled by communist bureaucrats or being ruled by large property owners (nobles or rich people).

Some of us here don't like either of those ideologies. :-)

As an African observing the European political landscape I find it increasingly bizarre. Your politicians seem hell bent on destroying your culture with mass immigration policies and the general populace just seems to take it lying down. At least in America people seem to have more rights.

This article doesn't provide enough data to support the conclusion it makes. They link to a report of population projections, but the report doesn't mention California (or any other state) at all. For all we know, just as many conservative Texans could be moving to California as there are Californians moving the other way, and the real trend is just an improved economy in both states -- or any number of other explanations.

While I mentioned this in another comment, the US census has the net migration between California and Texas as about +20,000 net per year moving to Texas in 2015 [0]. I believe the narrative is wrong, but there does seem to be movement towards Texas.

[0] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geograph...

California has an appealing history. But for today's living (including taxes), Texas seems pretty appealing.

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