Did California Help Texas Go Blue?
One of the biggest stories from this month’s Democratic victory in the midterms is that very red Texas elected a Democratic U.S. senator and governor.
Experts cite numerous theories to explain these surprising results: anger over the Iran war, high gas prices, Trump fatigue and data centers.
But have California’s high housing prices and the state’s historic exodus played a role?
Experts doubt it. In fact, some Californians who have moved to Texas are actually concerned about the blue wave.
Many assume that those arriving from California must be much more liberal than the average Texan, said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
But “a significant share of Californians who move to Texas tend to hold moderate to conservative views,” he said.
For years, Californians fled en masse to Texas. About 100,000 people made the move in 2022 alone, and many were seeking not only a lower cost of living, but also a state that reflected their conservative political vision.
Nearly half of Californians who moved to Arizona or Texas in the California exodus in recent years identified themselves as conservative or very conservative, according to a Stanford University study.
The Public Policy Institute of California found that those who leave the state often go to states that share their political beliefs: “Californians who leave for Republican states are significantly more likely to be Republicans than Democrats, compared to Californians overall, while those who leave for Democratic states are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans,” PPIC wrote.
In total, hundreds of thousands of conservative Californians have moved to Texas since the 2020 pandemic emergency, studies suggest.
Marie Bailey, 44, moved from El Segundo to a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb in 2017. She and her husband built a home for $750,000, while a “small remodel” in El Segundo reportedly cost more than $1 million.
The couple quickly realized they could capitalize on the niche real estate market catering to California migrants in Texas.
For years, Bailey administered the Facebook group where 45,000 users exchange recommendations on how to proceed. She runs a real estate company that places Californians across the state.
“Ninety-nine percent of our customer base is people moving out of California,” Bailey told the Times in 2023. As for why people are moving, “No. 1 is cost of living and No. 2 is politics.”
Banners for politicians are displayed October 27, 2026 in Edinberg, Texas.
(Gabriel V. Cardenas / For Time)
Texas’ red politics was one of the main reasons she made this decision.
Bailey’s husband, who previously worked for the UCLA medical system, “didn’t even want to talk about his politics because he was afraid of losing his job,” she said.
“Nowhere is perfect,” Bailey said in 2023, “but we fit in much better here.” »
Now, three years later, Bailey is facing a seismic shift in her condition.
“I’m actually thinking of moving to Oklahoma because of this,” she said in an interview Thursday. “Or Florida.”
In the “Move to Texas from California” Facebook group, most of the messages posted since Tuesday concerned the new situation in the Lone Star State.
“If I’m going to tolerate the blue, I might as well have good weather, so maybe go back to CA? Or try FL?” wrote one commenter.
“I’m literally closing on a house in Texas next week! I’m so pissed,” another wrote.
Of course, it was Elon Musk who led the charge from California to Texas when he moved there during the pandemic with his various businesses. At the time, he spoke out against the regulations and what he claimed were California’s woke politics.
Musk was part of a broader movement from Silicon Valley to places like Austin, which has boosted employment and property values there.
But there is some evidence that Texas’ tech boom is just one part of the blue wave. Data centers have become a major issue in the gubernatorial race, with Democrat Gina Hinojosa promising more regulations.
She also repeatedly accused her opponent, Greg Abbott, of being too beholden to tech billionaires and suggested she would also look into Elon Musk’s activities in the state.
Democrat James Talarico, elected to the US Senate, addressed similar themes. “We need to get a lot of money out of our politics, so no billionaire or trillionaire can buy our elections,” he said on election night. “We must dismantle this economic system which only benefits the richest 1%. »
Musk spent a lot of money supporting Republicans in the midterms.
After the election, Musk spoke to extremes and excessive regulation, we have moved our major national expansions and headquarters to Texas,” he wrote.
It will take time for the policy to shake out.
Blank sees benefits to Texas’ blue wave for those who left California.
“They have the advantage of having left what they consider to be an overly liberal state, and they get a place that is conservative, but it’s unlikely to get much more conservative anytime soon,” he said.
Blank believes many California transplants were primarily driven by housing costs, with politics secondary.
“They don’t need to move back,” he said of Californians who have moved to the Lone Star State. “And if they do, I’ll tell them they’re stupid. That’s not a good way to make decisions.”
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