California, whose new leftist governor, Gavin Newsom, has big ambitions to be the counter-president for now, and eventually replace President Trump, has this one little problem that always comes of socialist rule: the locals are fleeing.

Now it turns out half the ones who haven't fled are thinking about it.

Just over half of California's registered vote[rs] have considered leaving the state, with soaring housing costs cited as the most common reason for wanting to move, according to a new poll. Young voters were especially likely to cite unaffordable housing as a reason for leaving, according to the latest latest [sic] UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times. But a different group, conservatives, also frequently suggested they wanted to leave — and for a very different reason: They feel alienated from the state's political culture.

That just-over-half figure cited by the Los Angeles Times is actually 54%, broken down by 40% Republican and 14% Democrat voters. They want out and are dreaming of new lives in states where jobs are forming and housing isn't just for billionaires. Walk around any place in California and recognize that half the people you meet are people who want the hell out.

But it's not just registered voters. Despite that vast banquet of goodies California has offered to migrants with zero regard to immigration status — sanctuary protection; driver's licenses; automatic voter registration; ballot-harvesting privileges; free education well beyond K–12; a vast NGO/church network set up with state funds to "serve" illegals; free housing; free health care for the pregnant; no need to learn English; and, coming soon, free health care for illegals up to the age of 26 — even the migrants, both legal and illegal...are fleeing.

New York, Illinois and California had the biggest drops in immigrant [sic] population, along with New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut — losing a combined 206,000 immigrants [sic] as Florida and Texas together gained about 170,000. The numbers were released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

According to Pew:

Trade turmoil and spiraling home prices in blue states play a role. The shifts in immigrant [sic] population will have an impact on the 1 in 5 U.S. counties where immigration has softened population loss, those with agriculture or meatpacking industries that rely on immigrant [sic] labor, and states such as Texas and California where small population changes might cause shifts in political power after the 2020 census.

The Sacramento Bee reported earlier that already five million people have fled the state.

This has been going on for about a decade, right when the state turned monolithically blue. The state's population nevertheless has continued to grow slightly based on live births making up for the people leaving. That free health care for pregnant illegals, already in place in retrospect, had more than one purpose. You can see why the state's Democratic political machine has placed such a store in making it attractive to be an illegal alien — it's actually a plan keep the federal dollars flowing in as well as pad the congressional seats. They need these warm bodies, legal or not, and they know that their socialist policies are a formula for driving people out.

But now even that trend is collapsing. The plan is now failing. The state is set to lose population anyway — and congressional seats if the 2020 Census can pick up on it:

According to recently released data from the US Census, about 38,000 more people left California than entered it in 2018. This is the second straight year that migration to the state was negative, and it's a trend that is speeding up. Every year since 2014, net migration has fallen.

So despite the goodies, even the migrants are getting the heck out. And you can bet these include the better class of illegal migrants, which are the people coming here to work, not the ones who want to sop up welfare checks and send remittances abroad. The (legal) immigrants are an even bigger loss, given that many groups from Asia and beyond have much higher incomes and education than the average native-born.

So the state is actually set to shrink as even migrants head for the hills past the Colorado River. Seems that all free health care is no match for the idea of having a house and a job, something the socialists in absolute power in California are quite opaque to.

One can only hope it hits them hard when Census time comes around and some of those ballot-harvested congressional seats get yanked from them.

Image credit: Photo illustration by Monica Showalter from public domain source.