“I am literally closing on a house in Texas next week! I am so pissed.”
One Californian posted those words after Election Day, and the message landed in a Facebook group built to help people move from California to Texas.
Democrats had just won the state’s two biggest races. James Talarico took the U.S. Senate seat, and Gina Hinojosa captured the governor’s office. Gov. Greg Abbott lost.
Marie Bailey, 44, administers the group. A realtor who grew up in El Segundo, California, she has led it for years. Now she plans to leave Texas for Florida.
Bailey told The California Post the results left her “shocked,” Abbott’s defeat most of all. Florida’s low costs pulled her toward the Sunshine State.
“There’s a lot of people who I believe are going to change course to Florida,” she said. “Florida is actually where I am going.”
Her group has cooled on Texas, she said. Interest has fallen “quite a bit” since the vote, and most people she talks to now consider Florida as well.
Her wariness of Democrats traces back to her California years, Bailey said.
“I just don’t trust the motives, and I understand all politicians have some corruption in them, but when I pay for it — like that bullet train and high gas prices and all of that in California — it directly hits my wallet,” she said.
“So that’s a big deal to me.”
Other members weighed in with their own plans. “If I have to tolerate blue I might as well have good weather so maybe back to CA? Or give FL a try?” one wrote.
Breana Janel, a baseball mom and California native, called herself “heartbroken.” She once supported Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco in California’s gubernatorial race.
Democrats “were coming for Texas,” she said she “knew,” yet she believed she had more time.
“I don’t know that I can justify moving from one blue state to another…And I fear that Texas will never flip back,” she wrote. “Now that they have control, I don’t think they’ll let go.”
“That’s a lateral move. And for what? For it to look even more like California in four years?”
Janel now eyes Tennessee, the Carolinas and Georgia. Democrats picked up several key victories in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, too.
Across the country, the party flipped both the Senate and the House.
Researchers have studied who actually makes the California-to-Texas trip.
Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told the LA Times that most of these movers “tend to be moderate to conservative in their views.”
Money, not ballots, started most of the migration. Bailey said nearly all her business comes from Californians.
“Ninety-nine percent of our clientele are people moving from California,” Bailey said. “No. 1 [reason] is cost of living and No. 2 is politics.”
Housing drives the cost gap.
A 2025 analysis from RAND, a California-based policy research institute, put the price of building multifamily housing in California at more than 2.3 times the Texas figure.
One couple on Bailey’s website described the trade. They sold a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Orange County and moved into a five-bedroom, four-bathroom home in Texas.
“Our enthusiasm for Texas is real, our abundance is overflowing, and we are grateful, y’all,” they said.
The Gomez family, another of Bailey’s success stories, left California after the pandemic hit their business and pushed them “within an inch of total financial ruin.”
A single visit to Texas sealed their decision. “If you’re on the fence, this is your sign. Take the leap. The weight has lifted and we’re beyond blessed to be in Texas,” they wrote at the time.
Blank has a message for any transplant tempted to retreat.
“They don’t have to move back,” he said. “And if they do, I’m gonna tell them they’re silly. It’s not a good way to make decisions.”
