Early results of a new survey in California finds that of those people who are interested in leaving, one in three is Republican and one in four is Democrat.
The survey results are contained in a new report, Red vs. Blue States: Competing Visions for 2022 and 2024, conducted by researchers at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, from Oct. 11-26.
California is one of four states in the survey. In assessing their personal financial situation or quality of life, roughly 24 percent of California respondents said they were better off compared to two years ago, while 35 percent said they were worse off.
It’s the first time this set of questions has been run in a Rose Institute survey, co-author J. Andrew Sinclair, Ph.D., a professor of government at Claremont McKenna (CMC), told the Northern California Record.
“Lots of people are interested in leaving; unsurprisingly, this is very closely related to their partisanship," Sinclair said.
Among all registered voters, 44 percent said if they had the opportunity, they would move out of California.
Sinclair co-authored the report with CMC government professor Kenneth P. Miller, J.D., Ph.D., who is director of the Rose Institute and wrote the 2020 book, Texas vs. California: A History of Their Struggle for the Future of America.
The survey results, released last week, are part of a larger survey project by the CMC-Rose Institute Poll during the 2022 election cycle.
“Understandably, people find times challenging and so they think about a new and better life some other place,” Sinclair said. “But I was surprised the numbers were as high as they were, and some of it is probably that people use these questions as a way of expressing dissatisfaction.
“So I’m not sure I would say even close to this many people are seriously contemplating moving.”
But it could be a measure of respondents’ level of frustration, Sinclair added.
People mentioned a variety of economic issues informed their survey responses, Sinclair said, and the challenge is sorting out economic issues from political ones. No one tends to like higher gas prices, but they may favor taxing oil companies or want fewer green energy policies.
In addition to California, the survey includes respondents from New York, Texas, and Florida.
“The reason that we're focused on these particular states – we ran a survey in a bunch of uncompetitive states – which is just a little bit unusual, but the reason we are interested in these is because at the national level we have a fairly balanced electorate; we’ve seen some pretty close elections,” Sinclair said. “And so at the national level, we're seeing these arguments about which model we ought to have. But we don't see the actual implementation in full of either one.”
Sinclair said that in terms of who expressed interest in moving out of California, the splits are pretty big among political affiliation: 27 percent of Democrats are interested, 56 percent of Independents, and 70 percent of Republicans.
“In California, many respondents from across the political spectrum described concerns about the cost of living and other aspects of the economy,” the report states. “Meanwhile, many Republicans described concerns about politics and policy, while very few Democrats did. A Republican from San Diego wrote, ‘Taxes are too high in my state and the quality of life is getting worse.’”
Sinclair said there were lots of comments of that type: some more politely phrased, some less so.
Toward the end of the survey, respondents chose between California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president.
“The results highlight just how closely the country is split when selecting between governors who have developed two radically different state-level policy visions,” the report states. “In this match-up, DeSantis barely edges out Newsom, 51-49%. Our findings indicate that both candidates can count on the support of vast majorities of their own parties, with Newsom losing slightly more Democrats than DeSantis loses Republicans. Independents are closely divided between the two.”