Monday’s edition of Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day on Ballotpedia listed the sixteen States that lost population in 2020. That’s significant as it will likely affect the apportionment of congressional districts in a number of States, depending on how rapidly other States’ populations grew relative to these States’ shrinkage.
Seven of the States were in New England of the Mid-Atlantic: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The other nine were California, Michigan, Ohio, Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia.
While I certainly don’t like seeing Southern States in that list (I’ll consider West Virginia “honorarily Southern”), their inclusion makes sense. Mississippi is a great State, as I imagine West Virginia is, too, but they’re not exactly hotbeds of opportunity. Similarly, Louisiana is so corrupt, it’s little wonder that it’s shedding inhabitants.
The rest of these States make perfect sense: New England and the Mid-Atlantic are hotbeds of failed progressive policies and social justice insanity. Reading photog’s posts at Orion’s Cold Fire gives a good sense for the besieged nature of conservatives in his State, Massachusetts. I once spoke with a pharmacist who relocated his family from either Connecticut or Vermont—I can’t quite remember now—who said he had to move South because he was run out of his job for not supporting abortion.
