Sixty years ago this month, the song “California Dreamin’” was rising on the Billboard charts, thanks in large part to listeners of a Boston radio station who related to lyrics about longing for warmth on a winter’s day.
The song became part of the lore and mystique of California that drove Americans westward for decades.
But lately, the Golden State has been losing residents to other warm-weather states, and the latest survey from U-Haul about moving destinations suggests that’s still happening — and that politics might be involved.
For the sixth consecutive year, California was the U.S. state with the greatest out-migration, according to U-Haul’s annual “Growth Index” report. Meanwhile, Texas and Florida were the states that saw the most people arrive with their belongings piled in U-Haul trucks.
It was the seventh time that Texas topped the U-Haul list in the past decade. Last year’s top state, South Carolina, fell to No. 4 this year.
North Carolina and Tennessee were also top moving destinations, followed by Washington, Arizona, Idaho, Alabama and Georgia.
Utah, No. 9 last year, fell to 16th place this year.
“Sunshine and warm weather remain appealing to the moving public, based on the top 10 growth states,” U-Haul said in a statement. Its report, released annually since 2015, calculates growth by each state’s net gain or loss of one-way equipment from U-Haul customer transactions.
“We continue to find that life circumstances — marriage, children, a death in the family, college, jobs and other events — dictate the need for most moves,” John “J.T.” Taylor, U-Haul International president, said in a statement.
But the company also noted that “blue-to-red state migration ... continues to be a discernible trend.”
“Seven of the top 10 growth states currently feature Republican governors, and nine of those states went red in the last presidential election,” the report said. “Conversely, nine of the bottom 10 growth states feature Democrat governors, and seven of those states went blue in the last presidential election.”
Red-state migration is seen by some analysts as being driven by tax policy. In 2023, a nonprofit called The Tax Foundation examined moving reports from U-Haul and United, as well as census data, and found that high-tax states are losing residents, while the population of low-tax states are growing.
And a 2024 report by Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox at the Institute for Family Studies said that the growth in red states is driven, in part, by rejection of public policies favored by progressives.
“Economically, these states have also attracted parents looking for places with lower taxes and strong job growth. Finally, red states have generally resisted letting their schools and sports be guided by avant-garde gender theories. All these educational, economic, and cultural factors help explain the red state appeal to families with children looking to relocate," Stone and Wilcox wrote.
Red-state migration has also likely benefited from the moves of high-profile conservatives like Ben Shapiro, who moved from California to Tennessee in 2020, along with his company, The Daily Wire.
“Terrible governance has consequences,” he said, at the time, of California.
It’s important to note, however, that the U-Haul report is but one slice in a larger pie of data, some of which can initially seem to contradict U-Haul’s findings.
Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom trumpeted an increase in California’s population, saying in a news release, “Despite the common myth of a continually declining population, California has only saw a short period of population loss in its 174-year history — during the peak of the COVID pandemic, when it decreased by 379,544 people (which represents about 1% decrease over those two years), according to the U.S. Census Bureau."
The Los Angeles Times reported in December that California’s population has increased for three consecutive years, albeit slightly, noting that the state’s population is still less than it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The state’s population grew by about 19,200 people, marking a 0.05% increase from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025, according to data released Friday by the California Department of Finance. The previous year’s growth was slightly larger but still paltry at 0.58%,” Terry Castleman wrote for the Times.
“But that doesn’t mean people weren’t continuing to leave the state,” Castleman wrote. “In fact, the state would have experienced a population loss if not for new births and international arrivals offsetting those departures.”
According to the Times, “Between 2024 and 2025 more Californians moved out of the state than people from other states moved in — a deficit of approximately 216,000 residents. Between 2023 and 2024, that number was 140,000."
The California Department of Finance blamed slow growth, in part, on the Trump administration’s reduction of humanitarian migration programs.
If there’s any good news in the U-Haul report for the Golden State, it’s that California had a smaller net loss in 2025 than in 2024.
For Ohio, there was no good news at all. The Buckeye State, which last year ranked 14th as a net-gain state, fell 29 places this year, U-Haul said. Virginia, Indiana, Iowa, Delaware and Nebraska also saw double-digit drops in their rankings.