Via Ed Morrissey, Gallup finds that all 10 of the states that lost House seats due to the new census numbers are majority-Democrat.
Nine of the 10 states that lost congressional seats as a result of this year’s census are in the Northeast or Midwest. The exception is Louisiana, whose population loss at least partly as a result of Hurricane Katrina cost it a seat. Politically, all 10 of these “losing” states skew Democratic in political orientation, based on Gallup’s latest state political identification data from January through June of this year. The two states that each lost two seats, Ohio and New York, have a net Democratic political identification of +7 and +19, respectively. The Democratic margin in the other eight losing states ranges from +20 in Massachusetts to +1 in Missouri.
Of course party affiliation is not the causal factor here, but there are a number of policies that Democrats consistently favor - and hence policies that are more likely to be in effect in blue states - that may be driving the shift. Ed Driscoll directs us to RealClearPolitics, where Diana Furchtgott offers one theory:
The American people have been voting with their feet, the Census Bureau announced on Tuesday, leaving states with heavy union influence and choosing to live in “right-to-work” states with higher job growth where they cannot be forced to join a union as a condition of employment.But the National Labor Relations Board, now dominated by Obama appointees, is deaf to the preferences of voting Americans. It wants to do everything in its administrative power to tilt the playing field towards unionization-even if it means higher unemployment and lost jobs.
And of course there's the tax issue, as Michael Barone noted:
Seven of the nine states that do not levy an income tax grew faster than the national average. The other two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, had the fastest growth in their regions, the Midwest and New England.
Altogether, 35 percent of the nation's total population growth occurred in these nine non-taxing states, which accounted for just 19 percent of total population at the beginning of the decade.
Which policy do you think is driving Americans from blue states? Or is an amalgam of left-wing policies responsible for the shift?
