“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.
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.