There is political infighting following every decennial census. There has been at least since the size of the House was capped and for all I know before. One of the latest things that has emerged from the latest decennial census is that minorities have fled Northern states in increasing numbers and I think that will motivate a lot of the bickering we’ll hear over the next months and years. This piece by Bethany Blankley at Just the News provides some of the contours of the debate in just two paragraphs:
According to census data, many black Americans moved from northern blue states to Georgia, Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. The Brookings Institution suggests reverse migration is a cultural issue, with blacks relocating to communities where they were born or where their families lived before the Great Migration era (1917-1970), when six million people left segregated southern states to pursue jobs in the North.
However, Chuck DeVore, vice president of national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a former California State Assemblyman, argues that migration is primarily related to economics and employment patterns, meaning states that are less expensive with more jobs will attract residents, whereas states that are more expensive with less jobs will lose them.
Will the patterns of migration mean that red states will increasingly become purple or even blue? Or will it mean that Democrats will lose the lock on black and Hispanic votes on which they’ve counted in recent decades? My guess is both. Which trend dominates will shape the political future.
There is a movement among young radical blacks to move en masse back to the Old South and take political control of several states: viz, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. They want to make it a semi-autonomous region within the US. They believe that the Whites already living in the Old South will leave.
Racial segregation seems to be attractive to some young blacks. Since the black underclass is already heavily segregated in urban ghettos, moving to nearly all black states in the South would not be a major change for them. However, their belief that Whites are holding them down is delusional. A black Old South would most likely look like any sub-Saharan black country.
That’s been the case since the 60s, cf. “black nationalism”.
I think the country is being realigned into a new demographic model. It appears that while the democrat party still maintains a hold on the black community, that hold is shrinking. The last administration’s employment opportunities and stances on religion did attract more African Americans to voting Republican in the last election. Latinos as well are trending away from the democrats, whose policies and values are simply becoming too radical for this group to embrace. For instance, here in CA, according to a recent poll, 54% of the Latino population would vote to recall democrat Gov. Newsom. That was an astounding figure, and one that increased the intensity of the contest next month.
I have a different take on political implications of the census.
Rather then an interpretation focused on ethnicity; my interpretation is that during the 2010’s, the major shifts were actually rural vs urban.
What is noticeable is the shift to the Republican Party in rural counties north of the Mason-Dixon Line (in places like Iowa, Dakotas, Ohio valley that leaned Democratic through the Clinton years); these days the only rural areas that lean Democratic is the Black belt in the south and a very small section of New England (Vermont, New Hempshire, Mass). On the other side, urban/suburban areas south of the Mason-Dixon Line (Atlanta, Dallas, Houston) have shifted away from the Republican Party. Are there any urban/suburban areas in the country that are Republican?
So in 2020, the traditional differences between North and South seem diminished and the predominant split is rural vs urban but on a nationwide basis.
And going forward, what’s the implications from COVID unleashing forces (remote work) that could scramble the multi-decade long migration from rural to urban (in terms of population).
You make a good point about urban-rural balance, CuriousOnlooker, but I suspect it’s even more complicated than that. It’s a question of who is moving where.
Consider four different contexts: urban, suburban, rural, small town. Then consider the major ethnic/racial groupings. I think the trend is for blacks to move from North to South and from urban to suburban areas. I suspect that Hispanics are continuing to move to urban areas. It may be that whites are moving from urban to suburban, small town, or even rural areas. That would change the discussion of the rural broadband provisions in the “infrastructure bill” wouldn’t it? (for the record while I supported rural broadband as a federal program for years I think it’s unneeded now.) I’ve been a bit surprised to see increasing South Asian presence in small towns.