Blue-to-red migration is an under-appreciated phenomenon, particularly if the people and businesses moving between states tend to be more productive (in other words, those who pay taxes rather than those who consume taxes).
This visual is a good example. It shows, over a five-year period, which cities have lost and gained the most business headquarters. Every losing city is in a blue state. Every winning city is in a red state.
Keep in mind that the cities in red states will not only benefit from more business activity, but also will benefit from the executives and other workers employed at the headquarters.
Meanwhile, the blue states will lose both corporate and personal income tax revenue in addition to the foregone private-sector spending.
In the above chart, Texas is the big winner for business relocation and California is the big loser.
When people move, however, it seems that Florida is in first place. Here are some excerpts from a story for Fox News authored by Kristen Altus and Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi.
California’s self-inflicted economic wounds have reached a fever pitch in 2026. …the Golden State is witnessing an unprecedented mass migration. It is no longer just a working-class flight; California’s elite are actively being courted by pro-business states, prompting luxury billboards to tell Angelenos they should “move to Miami, where they are not being persecuted for having extreme wealth.” …”the people leaving are wealthier,” Chapman University professor Joel Kotkin told Fox News Digital. “And that means that they’re taking their tax dollars with them. So states like Florida and Texas gain enormously from this kind of trade, both from New York and from California in particular.” …California faces a critical turning point with a multibillion-dollar transportation funding gap, high energy costs, an upcoming November ballot measure for a controversial billionaire tax and staggering exodus numbers — notably including Los Angeles County losing more than 54,000 residents in a single year. …Florida became a major beneficiary of migration from high-tax states, attracting billions of dollars in luxury real estate investments from figures including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison. This shift occurred alongside a broader national trend that saw nearly $1 trillion in assets under management relocate from states such as California and New York to Sun Belt states, according to industry estimates.
My Republican readers certainly will appreciate the economic impact of all this migration. GOP states are growing faster and Democratic states are languishing.
But as I recently wrote (and as the meme illustrates), domestic migration may not be good news for the GOP.
