Harry Enten Predicts ‘Blue State Depression’ That Could Spell Doom for Democrats

Democrats were giddy Sunday after flipping a special election in Texas blue, but CNN’s data guru Harry Enten found doom for their future electoral fortunes in population trends.

Taylor Rehmet, a first-time candidate and local union leader, won a shock upset victory Saturday in a special election for a Texas state senate seat against Leigh Wambsganss, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump. It’s a deep-red district — Trump carried it by more than 17 points in the 2024 election — but Rehmet sailed to a double-digit win (57 percent to 43 percent).

Enten popped in to Sunday’s episode of CNN Newsroom to chat with anchor Jessica Dean about what the numbers looked like as we head towards the November midterms and beyond.

After some chatter about the frigid winter weather, Enten commented that “in politics, we often lose sight of the long term because we’re so focused in, so focused in on the short term, so today I wanted to take a look at some long term population trends.”

These trends “really should set off a flashing red siren to Democrats nationwide, while bringing a big smile to the faces of Republicans nationwide,” Enten continued, because of which states had the biggest population gains since the 2020 Census. The top five all voted for Trump in 2024: Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona.

The issue for Democrats, Enten explained was that this “is not just a red state boom,” but “we’re also looking at what I would dare call a blue state depression,” because the population changes were from people moving from blue states into red states. All five of the states with the “lowest domestic net migration this decade” were states that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024: California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

This “could also have major political ramifications if it holds for 2030, the next Census,” said Enten, because the way U.S. House seats are reapportioned based on each state’s population, and so, if the 2025 population shifts hold for 2030 in the states Harris won, then Democrats “would lose seven seats” in the House, and the states Trump won, would gain seven seats.

This could also have an effect on presidential elections, he explained:

Now, this isn’t just about the House of Representatives, right? It’s also about the Electoral College, because the number of electoral votes that each state gets is equal to the number of senators. Each state, of course, has two, plus the number of house seats that they have.

So what would this mean for the House of Representatives? Well, if you remember back in 2024, right, it was all about we were talking about the “blue wall.” If Kamala Harris could win the baseline Democratic states and then add in the “blue wall” states of Michigan, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, she would get to 270 electoral votes.

But if all of a sudden we, in fact have — applying the 2025 estimates, the population estimates to the Electoral College, the blue states, plus the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin would no longer be enough.

Under the current estimates, you get to exactly 270 electoral votes, the minimum needed to win the Electoral College. If, in fact you apply the 2025 estimates, look at that. You would only get to 263 electoral votes if you were a Democrat, which would mean a Republican victory.

Now, of course, we’re still a number of years away from reapportionment, right? We take the Census come 2030. But what we can say so far is we got a red state boom going on, a blue state depression going on, people moving from the blue states to the red states.

And if it holds for 2030, well, it would make the Democratic nominee for president’s job of winning the Electoral College that much more difficult.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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