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Comment by post_break | Hacker News Reader

The problem most Texans see is they flea California, realize it’s different, and vote for the same stuff they had there. A lot of Texans do not want California transplants. Just like how Montana doesn’t want Texans.

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Or perhaps they left California for Texas because they didn’t approve of the policies that have made CA a worse place to live, but their vote is in the minority in CA and so they can’t realistically do anything about how broken and dysfunctional the government and policies there are?

Speaking as a lifelong Californian who just moved to Austin, and has had to explain this to the few people who espouse the "don't turn Texas into California" trope.

Unfortunately, as proven by every area that has the "privilege" of receiving new Californian transplants, you are in the extreme minority.

That trope is really annoying. California has become more liberal because conservatives have left, so putting all of them into the same basket is dumb. Though I guess conservative Californians aren’t moving to ultra liberal cities like Austin for ideological reasons.

In my network of professional friends and acquaintances, I see more moderate liberals leaving the Bay Area for Austin than I do conservatives.

The conservative folks seem to look more towards Montana and Idaho.

Relatively small n, but still...

Not sure. There aren’t that many conservative software developers, and those that are are more likely to wind up in Provo or Boise. On the other hand, there are lots of conservative Californians outside of the Bay Area and outside of tech who have left the state, they are more likely to have wound up in Texas.

Let’s hope the Bay Area can lose a million or two people to bring some sanity back to traffic and housing prices.

I’m sure there are some people who think like that, but is it really “most”? I don’t remember any prominent groups saying that Elon Musk’s move is bad for Texas, for example. Any policies that Texans love are going to be safe, because even if migration became so large that California transplants made up 5% of the population, they wouldn’t be able to flip votes on anything 60%+ of Texans agree on.

Texas is actually heading towards turning blue due to demographic changes (hispanics overtaking whites as the majority) and this might hasten it by a few years, depending on who moves from California.

False. If demographic trends (how Texas hispanics shifted to the GOP from 2016) are extrapolated, Texas is actually trending towards the GOP.

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