Debunking Gavin Newsom’s Defense of California (Part 1)

Sean Hannity recently had Gavin Newsom, the Governor of the shrinking state of California, on his show. In spite of that, Newsom came well prepared with a set of misleading statistics to try to downplay the fact that his state has caused U-Haul to run out of trucks due to the sheer volume of people fleeing. 

Due to the rapid-fire volume of nonsense he spewed, this rebuttal will be broken up into two articles. Newsom’s arguments can be viewed below (and those not addressed here will be addressed in a separate article). 

That California is shrinking is no secret, and Newsom has overseen the first population decline in California for the first time since 1850, which is clearly embarrassing for him. But nevertheless, Newsom attempted to obfuscate reality with a handful of statistics that liberals on social media actually found convincing, claiming that he “owned” Hannity. 

“You didn’t talk about all those red states that have opposite policies that you embrace. Something is clearly not working right in those states… Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia that all had higher population loss.” Newsom said. 

How is it that Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia could have higher population loss, when heavily blue states such as California, New York, and Illinois (in that order) lead the nation in population loss? Because Newsom measures population loss as a percent of total population. California has a population exceeding 39 million while Mississippi has just short of 3 million, Louisiana has just over 4.6 million, and West Virginia has just under 1.8 million. Thus, Newsom tries to downplay California’s population shrinkage as only being a small percentage. 

Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia were never states known for attracting much migration, hence why Newsom was forced to reference them as if they’re the only red states in the nation. Furthermore, Newsom is delusional if he thinks the residents of those three states are fleeing for blue states instead of other red states. One can view in the map below why Newsom only mentioned those three states in cherry picking the data: 

Overall, nine of the ten states with the least net domestic migration voted for Biden in 2020, while nine of the ten states with the most domestic migration voted for Trump. 

Another claim that stood out from Newsom was that “Per capita, more Floridians move to California than Californians move to Florida.” 

Newsom appears to be citing a review of 2021 Census data which calculated for every 1,000 Floridians, 1.16 move to California, while for every 1,000 Californians, 0.96 moved to Florida (the raw numbers show a net 13,000 more people moving from California to Florida). These are based on estimates, and are not statistically significant. 

Newsom is trying to distract you from what you can see with your own eyes below: 

That there is effectively no net migration between California and Florida doesn’t mean that California isn’t shrinking while Florida isn’t growing.  Texas is the biggest beneficiary of California’s refugees, and Californians are most likely to move to states with no state income tax. Florida and Texas make up 15% of the U.S. population and have accounted for 70% of population growth from July 2021-July 2022. 

While Newsom may not be great at managing a state, he certainly is good at twisting statistics in his favor. Stay tuned for part 2!