A guest post from our friends at the Burnt Orange Report

by Katherine Haenschen

The Texas Tribune released an interesting nugget from their polling results — it appears that the majority of Californians who flee the Golden State for the Lone Star are actually conservatives, rather than likely Democratic voters who can help turn the state blue.

As Joshua Blank of the Texas Tribune writes of these transplants (emphasis mine):

The plurality of those [California] migrants have moved to Texas, as many as 70,000 in 2011 and 60,000 in 2012. Given this influx of new residents, we are fortunate to have at times asked our respondents whether they have moved to Texas from California, and though the actual number of these people is but a small subsample of our surveys, we have enough respondents to make two broad conclusions. First, these newcomers, on average, tend to be conservative. Pooling data from the May 2012 and February 2013 UT/Tribune surveys, we found that 57 percent of these California transplants consider themselves to be conservative, while only 27 percent consider themselves to be liberal (a fair guess as to the margin of error is somewhere around +/- 7 percentage points). Second, these new Texans aren’t rushing to find homes in the state’s urban centers: 55 percent are heading to the suburbs, the rest evenly dividing themselves between rural and urban locations.

Well then.

Welcome, Californians. Given your conservative tilt, I can only assume y’all have moved here to avoid the scourge of a state income tax that funds government services, public education, and basic civilization. Surely all y’all are aware that much of California’s dysfunction was due to Republicans’ abuse of the 2/3rds rule in the Legislature and endless efforts to obstruct functioning government?

Well if Republicans obstructing functional government is what you’re into, you’ve come to the right state!

Texas ranks 49th in per-student spending and 38th in teacher pay. We have the highest rate of uninsured residents of all time. Don’t care about those touchy-feely issues? Well, you probably like water and electricity. We’re facing a crisis in water that transplants like y’all are only exacerbating. Our power grid is unstable, so prepare for rolling blackouts.

So welcome to Texas, conservative Californians. Those of us who care about health and human services, education, sustainability, and the environment are working pretty hard to turn things around, so pretty soon you might be facing a voter rebellion that results in the kind of progressive government that might send you packing again in search of redder pastures.

But hey, I hear Alabama’s really nice.