Blue states on pace to lose 12 seats after census (01-23-2025--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] Last hour, I talked about this Yasha Monk piece. Hang on, I'm pulling the... How Not to Resist Donald Trump. He's a man of the left. He talked about how all these tactics that they tried didn't work for basically eight years. They need something new. They need to figure it out. Okay, whatever.

[00:00:49] Now, the Associated Press. Yeah, this piece is from about a week ago. Democrats' crisis of the future. The biggest states that back them are shrinking. Texas and Florida are growing rapidly. California, Illinois, and New York are shrinking. Remember the blue wall? Remember that?

[00:01:23] The... The... I mean, the formidability. Formidableness? The state of being formidable. The blue wall. These were all these blue states. And it was a wall to the point where, like, Democrats didn't even have to worry about these states. They didn't have to go campaign and stuff. Much like, you know, Hillary Clinton in 2016 with Wisconsin. It was like...

[00:01:49] By the way, just a peek behind the curtain here. They're apparently doing a whole bunch of testing on our generator for the building. We have no control over it. We do not own our building. And so, stuff keeps shutting off and shutting off and shutting off and turning back on. And I assume that's related. But with the scent of the fuel from the generator pouring in through the HVAC systems. But... So, they're doing a bunch of tests. We have no control over the timing of it. But...

[00:02:17] So, day two under siege here. So, if we cut out or something, that's going to be the reason why. Anyway. Anyway. So, back to this Associated Press story. You've got Texas and Florida growing. California, Illinois, and New York are shrinking by population. Like, the state lines are not moving here, people. Okay? Although... I mean, if California is interested in doing a redraw, I am open to that idea. I have long...

[00:02:43] I have long been supportive or at the very least curious about the idea to cut California up into, like, five different states. I would be... Because, like, that state's too big. It's just too long, you know? It's just way too long. You can't... Like, if you can't get to the other end of your state in, like, less than a day, your state's too big. It's just... It's too big.

[00:03:13] But they're going to have that... They're going to have that bullet train by the... That's where all the firefighting money went. Anyway, with America's population shifting to... Where? Where do you think the population is shifting to? Correct. It is the South. It is... Yes, the shift is going to the South. Thank you. Air conditioning and sweet tea.

[00:03:39] Political influence is seeping from reliably Democratic states to areas controlled by Republicans. Coming out of the presidential election, where Democrats lost all seven swing states, Democrats are facing a demographic challenge that could reduce their path to winning the U.S. House of Representatives or the White House for the long term. So, wait a minute.

[00:04:07] Maybe demographics actually is destiny. No, it's not. But... Right? When you reduce people to only, like, immutable characteristics, it's not a healthy thing for the society. But also, it's not... That's not a strategy for winning people over. Right? Right? You can't just go to people and say, hey, like, you're white. Vote for me. It's just not... People don't respond very well. I did... Hang on. Let me go back because this...

[00:04:35] Obviously, this piece here at the AP connects to the piece I did in the first hour. I have some messages regarding that. This is from Chris. He says, based on what you were stating from the piece you were referring to, I conclude that the average American voter is far more intelligent than the leftists think they are. That is correct. This is the wisdom of the crowd. Right? You can only tell people a lie for so long.

[00:05:05] Eventually, the truth comes out. And people recognized... And, like, the biggest example of this was Joe Biden's mental acuity. People could see with their own eyes. COVID. Another one. People could see with their own eyes what was going on around them. The economy. Another one.

[00:05:29] And it didn't matter how much messaging you try to fire hose into people's faces. They have their own real-life experiences. They can see stuff. And they understand the DEI stuff. That's another one. Right? The left never really truly understood what the, quote, normies thought of these policy overreaches that were happening.

[00:05:55] Like, these training seminars and stuff where, you know, you say something. If someone's offended, that means that you have transgressed them. Whether your intent was to do so or not, your intent doesn't matter. I was literally told that. Intent doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is how somebody receives it. It's like, well, why am I hired to do this job? Right?

[00:06:23] Are you aware this is a political talk show? Like, people had to live with this. People lost jobs. People got canceled. People got tossed out of the military because they didn't want to take a shot. People suffered actual harms. And no amount of messaging that you could do during and after the fact to try to retcon this, nothing you could do is going to change their opinion. And it's why they went back to Donald Trump.

[00:06:54] All right. Back to the AP story here. If the current trend continues, okay, and we get to 2030, which is only five years away now, right? We are halfway to the next census, which, by the way, we definitely need to clean that up again. Trump tried the last time for the 2020 census and, you know, lawsuits all over the place.

[00:07:17] But we have to clean up the census because in 2020, I'm sure this is completely coincidental, but they overcounted blue state populations and undercounted red state populations. And they have all sorts of reasons for it, excuses for it. You know, well, you know, those Republican voters, they just want to hang out with their Bibles and guns, you know, cling to their Bibles and guns off in the hinterlands. They didn't return our calls.

[00:07:45] They didn't tell us how many people were living with them. Well, if you're just, see, here's the thing. If you just want to do a count, that's easy enough to do. But if you're going to ask all sorts of invasive questions and threaten people, if they don't answer your surveys, then they're just not ever going to take your phone calls. And maybe that's the point, right? Maybe that was the point. But they also counted illegal immigrants. They counted population. And their argument was, well, they are still living in these communities.

[00:08:14] So if you're distributing money based on population, then you count them because they are people living in that state. Right. But they're not supposed to be here. They cannot vote. And so when you are apportioning the votes, which is what we're talking about here, you're doing apportionment with the redistricting. You're allocating House of Representative members, right? Congressman, congresswomen.

[00:08:38] And so when you're doing that, why are you counting people who can't vote because they're not in the country lawfully? That issue, as far as I know, has still not been settled. So anyway, fast forward to 2030. We're five years away. And if the current trends continue, this is just people moving. OK, moving out of California, New York, Illinois, moving into states like ours.

[00:09:09] If that continues, what we've seen so far, by 2030, states that voted for Vice President Harris will lose a dozen House seats. Democrats will be down a dozen seats in the House just by demographics. Electoral college votes as well.

[00:09:32] The Democrat path to 270 electoral college votes, the minimum needed to win the presidency, becomes much, much narrower. Because it's not just for your congressional apportionment, right? It's how many electoral votes you get in the presidency. And so if the big Democrat states are shrinking, they get fewer electoral votes. Now, maybe they can pick some up, like Arizona, for example. Maybe they pick up some of the states. Colorado went blue, right?

[00:10:01] Maybe they pick up some other states and they can cobble that together. But if you keep packing more and more Republicans that are fleeing these blue states into states like Texas and Florida, North Carolina is another one. Like, you keep packing them in here, we get more seats and we get more electoral votes. Here's a great idea. Yep. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain? And Cabins of Asheville is your connection.

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[00:11:21] Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. So if the current trend holds through 2030 and the next census, blue states lose a dozen seats. These are seats that went to, or these are congressional seats, yes, but also electoral votes that went to Harris.

[00:11:47] And that makes the math much more difficult for Democrats. There's a quote here from Michael Lee. L-I. Michael Lee. Is he the guy that testified on the redistricting stuff against the North Carolina legislature? I think he is. Senior Counsel for the Democracy Program at the New York University School of Law's Brennan Justice Center.

[00:12:16] Quote, at the end of the day, I hate that saying. Such a crutch. Democrats have to be able to win in the South or compete in the South. That's a very low bar, right? They just have to compete. You just, you got to put up a fight.

[00:12:39] I'm thinking of the meme of the guy with a stick poking something on the floor like, move, move. Just do something, Democrats. He says, otherwise it's a really uphill battle every single time. The Brennan Center, which is left-leaning. That's how the AP describes left-wing, leftist, liberal, whatever. It's always left-leaning.

[00:13:08] See, because it's in the middle. It just leans just a wee bit, just a little bit. I mean, the Brennan Center leans so far left, you know, it's like, it's leaning. It would, you'd be more accurate to call it a leftist organization that leans a little right. Because the lean is so far that way. Anyway, the Brennan Center projects Democratic states in 2024 would lose 12 seats in the next census.

[00:13:35] The right-leaning American redistricting project forecasts a similar blue to red shift, but that pegged the loss at 11 seats, not 12. So, either way, you're looking at 11 or 12 seats, and that's just because people are fleeing these states. That's it. It would be the continuation of a decades-long trend of the population shifting from the northeast and midwest to the south and the inland west.

[00:14:05] So, from midwest to inland west. So, would that be like Central America? No, that's not Central America. They're all coming here. No. Middle America. Inland west. I've never heard that term before. Have you ever heard that term before? The inland west? Anyway, Americans and immigrants are gravitating towards warmer climates, cheaper housing, lower taxes, and plentiful jobs.

[00:14:33] Look, in the northeast, I get the warmer climate comparison. I will say the one thing I do miss about the northeast is that they do actually have – I mean, not like Canada, right? Anything north of the Bronx is Canada to this Long Island kid. But anything – like, they have longer winters.

[00:14:55] But, you know, the lower northeast, you know, mid-Atlantic get four actual seasons, which was nice. You get four seasons of, you know, about three months, and the weather actually comports with what the season is versus in the south where I think it's basically two, two-and-a-half seasons.

[00:15:20] You know, it just goes right to screaming hot and then just stays there for a really long time. I'm not saying you don't get a couple of days here and there. You may get like a week of spring. You know, that's about it. You get like two weeks of fall, two weeks of winter or something like that. But anyway, I digress. But think about the other things listed. Cheaper housing, lower taxes, plentiful jobs.

[00:15:44] All of those things – all of those things are within the control of the governing parties. Right? If you are in charge of your state policies, then you can actually do something about housing, taxes, and jobs. This is a direct result of decisions that are made.

[00:16:09] The AP talks about the states that are losing the seats, a.k.a. population. New York, they lost – yeah, sorry. California will lose four seats. New York will lose two. Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin would lose one seat each. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are swing states.

[00:16:37] All of those states, though, have consistently backed Democrats for president and sent Democrat majorities to the House, except for the swing states. But all those other ones are blue states. The red states, the ones that are going to pick up seats, Florida and Texas are both projected to pick up four seats apiece. Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, and Utah all pick up one.

[00:16:58] And all of them backed Trump for president last year, although Arizona and North Carolina were competitive and all have Republican majorities in their U.S. House delegations. Okay? So there's the plus minus. I mentioned earlier the blue wall. All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season, but tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says,

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[00:18:20] Email is Pete at thepetecallinershow.com. Regarding the attacks on Trump, Dennis said,

[00:18:51] And they do, I think they do have the same hair. The roadrunner. Right? Doesn't he have a plume or something on his head? So, okay. So, from the Associated Press, Harris could have won last year by keeping the blue wall. All she had to do was maintain the blue wall, which was Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania,

[00:19:16] along with one congressional district in Nebraska, because that state splits up its electoral votes. In the next decade, so after the 2030 census, though, that's not going to be enough. The blue wall, even if it is maintained by Democrats, it's not going to be enough because they're not going to have enough seats. But in not just some of the blue wall states, but in these other states.

[00:19:41] Because, as I mentioned before, the states that are going to lose include Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, that's part of the, quote, blue wall, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Another state in the, quote, blue wall. California, New York, hemorrhaging population. And so, there aren't enough votes in the electoral college for the Democrat. It's not, the blue wall will not be enough.

[00:20:10] The blue wall strategy combined with safely Democrat states would give them 258 electoral votes. But you need 270 to win. So, you've got to find some other states. And this is a problem for Democrats because they don't know how to get voters in those other states to support their candidates. Because of the messaging. Yeah, probably. It's like, oh, they're just not hearing us.

[00:20:39] Yeah, that's it. So, the next part of the story says, how do Democrats remain relevant? I would submit, and you can take this advice or leave it. It doesn't matter to me. I would submit the way to remain relevant is to basically change all of the planks in your platform. To just do the opposite of what you're doing right now.

[00:21:04] To control the White House, the House or Senate, Democrats will likely need to do better in the three southern swing states. These states, namely, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. These three states lean conservative but have elected Democrats at a statewide level. Okay? So, they're like, oh, okay. So, like in North Carolina. Oh, look. They put Josh Stein in the governor's mansion. Right?

[00:21:34] And now, there are reasons for this. And this is, you know, the old axiom, all politics is local. I think that was Tip O'Neill that said that all politics is local. And there are reasons for it. I've gone over this right after the election. And people could not figure out, like, why are North Carolina voters, you know, so split? Why do they split their tickets? Well, North Carolina has split tickets between president and governor for decades. This is not a new phenomenon.

[00:22:03] This has been occurring now. Now, those ticket splitters are growing smaller and smaller. Like, that population is shrinking. But it has a lot to do with just the history of the Democrat Party in this state. The machine. And it is still running. It was defeated at the legislative level.

[00:22:24] But at the state level, the Democrat machine does a very good job of elevating a certain kind of candidate, right, over others inside its own primary system. Roy Cooper and Josh Stein followed the exact same path, right? Senate, attorney general, governor. They have a pipeline. They have a system.

[00:22:53] And the Republicans, famously, beat the crap out of each other in their primaries. And the Democrats generally do not. Remember Jeff Jackson, a.k.a. Baby Jesus, now the attorney general? Remember, he was going to run for U.S. Senate. Remember that? And what happened? He bailed the first time. That's how Cal Cunningham got it, right? He said, oh, I want to do a hundred-county tour. And Chuck Schumer was like, no, you're going to go into a windowless basement and dial for dollars.

[00:23:24] They take the orders from the national party when they're running for these national seats. They get all this outside money that pours in from these interest groups, these Democrat and progressive interest groups. And Roy Cooper really solidified that when he ran against McCrory and just swamped McCrory with the fundraising from out of state. And Josh Stein continued with that. And Mark Robinson did not help himself in that regard.

[00:23:51] He could have probably gotten a lot more money from out of state had he not had all of the other personal issues attached to him, right? So Jeff Jackson then, remember, he was going to run again for U.S. Senate. And then what did he do? What did he do? He bailed. Why? It wasn't his turn, right? So he, I mean, now, for the record, okay, for the record, he said, you know, Sherry Beasley is qualified. She should run against Ted Budd, right? Like she should run. She should do it. Black female started.

[00:24:21] It's her turn. As a white male, I recognize my privilege and he steps aside. Do you think that's really the reason he stepped aside? Or was it because that's where the party wanted to devote its energy? They thought this was going to be the play. But when it comes to the state governor's race and stuff like that, the state party, they're controlling that. The machine in the North Carolina Democrat Party, like they and the big money donors, they know what kind of Democrat wins.

[00:24:50] Pro business. Right? Keep the social issues to a minimum. Wear the sweater vests. Right? Like there's a certain kind of candidate that does better in a statewide race as a Democrat. And it harkens back to the days when the Democrat machine ran this state for a century and a half. And so that's why North Carolina voters, especially older ones, will split their tickets.

[00:25:19] That's, again, that's becoming way smaller of a population. I think it's down now, it's somewhere around 4% of all the voters now will split their tickets. So what do Democrats do to remain relevant? According to the AP. Not my advice, which was to just do the opposite of whatever you're doing right now. But they offer some tips because, you know, the AP wants what's best for the Democrats. So they're going to give them some helpful advice. All right.

[00:25:46] If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place. So you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete.

[00:26:14] I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The Blind Spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:26:43] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let's head over and get a comment from Ray. Hello, Ray. Welcome to the show. Hey, Pete. How are you? Hey, I'm good. What's up? I just had a question. I was a little confused while ago. It made me realize I didn't understand.

[00:27:03] But is it the same number of electoral votes as it is House seats or how does that work? So, yeah. So, the number of House seats is based on – so, you take – without going – well, you take the total population of America. You divide it up by 435. That's the House seat number, right? So, you divide that and that gives you a population for each district, okay?

[00:27:33] And so, I think right now it's somewhere around 850,000, 800,000, something like that. And so, then you – that tells you, based on the state's population, how many congressional seats you get. So, in North Carolina, we have now 14 congressional seats. So, yes, each one of those seats is an electoral college vote. So, we have 14 votes there. But you also add in the Senate seats, which every state has two of those.

[00:27:59] So, every state has two U.S. Senate seats plus a minimum of one House seat. And then after that, that's the difference. So, North Carolina has 16 electoral college votes, if my math is correct on that. Yeah, I looked it up a while ago. I think there's 538 electoral votes, if I'm correct. Is that correct? There may be – well, so 435 plus 100 senators gets you to 535.

[00:28:28] And the other three may be for maybe like Puerto Rico and Guam, if it hasn't capsized yet. Maybe District of Columbia. I forget what the other – yeah, where the other ones come from. So, the bottom line is the number of Senate seats and House seats combined pretty much equals the number of electoral votes. Right. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to clear that up. Yes, sir. I appreciate it. Yes, sir. All right.

[00:28:57] Of course, I could be completely wrong on it. No, I'm kidding. No. The math is correct on that. I don't know what the 538 – I thought the 538 – because that was the name of Nate Silver's political data firm. The 538, I think, includes president and vice president and I think the grand marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court. I think that – Anyway.

[00:29:28] So, what do Democrats have to do? According to the Associated Press, they will likely need to do better in the three southern swing states, as I mentioned. Alternatively, they could try to achieve their long-elusive goal of turning Texas blue or reverse the – Or reverse the recent trend towards Republicans in Florida. Yeah. Uh. Yeah, that could happen. Sure.

[00:29:57] Why not? I guess. Hmm. That could happen. To be sure, Republican dominance in the 2030s is not a foregone conclusion, so let's not rest on our laurels. Not long ago, Democrats thought they were building an insurmountable majority due to their strength with voters of color and a growing Latino population across the country. But that fell apart when Trump and the GOP began making inroads with the Democrats' traditional working class base. In other words, demographics is not destiny.

[00:30:28] Right? Ideas matter. Candidates matter. Let's take a look at North Carolina. Our friend Andy Jackson at the John Locke Foundation, he does these regular updates. He monitors the voter registration changes when they do the list maintenance and all of that stuff. And so the other day he published the updated list. Voter registration changes. Most counties did their biennial list maintenance this week.

[00:30:56] The Democratic advantage shrank from 86,000. So Democrats have an 86,000 vote advantage. And now it's down to a 41,000 vote advantage. Eight counties, including Buncombe County, have not done their list maintenance yet, depending on what happens with them.

[00:31:21] He says, I expect Republicans to overtake Democrats in North Carolina politics late this year or early 2026. He has been monitoring this trend for years. And it has been steady. Steady Republican registration growth and steady Democrat registration decline. You'll recall years ago.

[00:31:49] I want to say maybe it may even have been a decade ago. Unaffiliated surpassed Republicans by registration. In North Carolina, you can register Democrat, Republican, unaffiliated, libertarian, Green Party, Constitution Party. And unaffiliated surpassed the Republicans by registration. And now and then I think a year ago, maybe unaffiliated surpassed Democrats. So the number one party registration is not a party at all.

[00:32:18] It is unaffiliated in this state. And that means you get to vote in either Democrat or Republican primary. When you go in for the primaries, you can pick if you're unaffiliated. I've been doing this for 20 years. But what he's talking about now is that the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans for that number two slot. The Democrats are losing tens of thousands of registration and the Republicans are gaining.

[00:32:48] And so Republicans are soon to overtake Democrats as the second largest registration group in the state, probably by the end of the year. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.