by Jonathan Rawles, Survival Blog:
(Continued from Part 1.)
Political Migration: Origins of the Big Sort
In 2008, demographers Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing put a name to a trend that had been going on in America since the 1960s with their book The Big Sort. The authors’ contention is that Americans are sorting themselves geographically and that as a consequence, all areas are becoming more politically polarized.
In their model, people do not necessarily move for explicitly political reasons, but based on lifestyle and cultural choices, which tend to correlate with political outlooks. As they describe it: “People who move to Portland want good public transportation and city life. People who don’t give a hoot about those things migrate to Phoenix, suburban Dallas, south of Minneapolis, or north of Austin.”
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The 2008 presidential election defined popular conceptions of “Red” and “Blue” America, contrasting wealthy, progressive states with largely poor, conservative red states. Major cracks appeared with the 2008 financial crash and due to growing political divisions during Obama’s presidency. The map below (click to zoom) tells the story:
(Illustration courtesy of Tilden76 at English Wikipedia. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.)
The growing political tensions and the marginalization of conservatives in liberal America made many “blue state” conservatives feel increasingly out of place. They began feeling pressured to keep their beliefs private or face social and professional attacks. As this intolerance grew, a trickle of conservatives coming out of blue states grew over the following years and became a steady stream of relocatees.
In 2011, the American Redoubt movement was launched by James Wesley, Rawles. It explicitly emphasized the idea of moving for liberty and survivability. This aspect of the movement attracted significant media attention, with dozens of newspaper articles and dramatic mini-documentaries produced by Vice News and The Sunday Times.
The election of Donald Trump as the nation’s 45th president in 2016 could do little to reverse our national divisions. The media rhetoric demonizing Trump and “MAGA” Republicans inflamed tensions and divisions to even higher levels. Then, in 2020, riots and pandemic lockdowns were the final straw, turning the steady tide of migration out of blue states into a torrent. Many tens of thousands of people relocated over the past four years, looking for peace, freedom, and normalcy.
In 2023, California pastor Joel Webbon relocated along with several families to plant a new church in Texas. He outlined the reasons for making the journey in his book Fight by Flight and multiple podcast episodes. He publicly acknowledged that his previous admonitions to his church members to “stay in California” ran contrary to the duties of Christian fathers to lead, provide, and protect their families. Instead, he argued that relocation for a better life was entirely defensible and that Christians should have a clear conscience about making the best choice for their families.
A 2024 report from the Tax Foundation shows that 2024 has moderated the pace of inter-state migration from the peaks of 2021-2023, but the overall pattern of migration out of blue states and into red states has not changed.
An interactive Interstate Moves Map published by The Tax Foundation clearly shows theses changes and trends.
Finally, the 2024 Trump presidency is hopefully a positive sign for our national direction or at least a reprieve from the ruin that the Obama/Biden/Harris administrations seemed determined to run us into. It’s also a more hopeful picture for the longer-term stability of our electoral system, with a massive nationwide pushback against Harris and a victory that really was “too big to rig.”
Impacts and Responses
Public responses to the Big Sort, the American Redoubt, and related movements have been mixed. The overall impact has generally been downplayed by the media, except when they feel the need for a rightwing extremist scarecrow or a lament about political division.
In January 2024, The Orlando Sentinel reported on the Great Sort towards the sunbelt amongst conservatives. “Hundreds of thousands of people leaving states such as New York, Illinois, and California and moving to Florida and Texas in 2022 and 2023.”