The ‘Great Sort’ draws transplants pushing Florida to the right, experts say

A mass migration of Northeasterners and Midwesterners into Florida, many of them conservatives leaving Democratic states, has led to the state’s politics turning sharply to the right, experts say.

New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau this month showed that movement is continuing, with hundreds of thousands of people leaving states such as New York, Illinois and California and moving to Florida and Texas in 2022 and 2023.

“The notion of the ‘Big Sort’ … is really proving itself,” said Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst. “That’s the idea that people move based on the politics. … For a lot of retirees, places like Florida are appealing, especially if they’re already conservative.”

According to Census estimates, New York lost nearly 217,000 people to domestic migration from July 2022 to July 2023 and nearly 882,000 since April 2020. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan also lost thousands of residents in that time.