One thing is clear after the midterms. There is a "great decoupling" taking place.
Red states are redder, blue states are bluer.
While there was widespread disappointment that the red wave never materialized, in the election post-mortem we must acknowledge one reality — people have been voting with their feet.
Americans are picking the government they want, with many moving from states with heavy-handed responses to COVID to pro-liberty states where state governments took a more personal-freedom approach.
Take Florida, for example.
When Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., was narrowly elected in 2018, Democrats had 300,000 more registered voters than Republicans.
On Election Day 2022, however, Democrats suffered their worst statewide performance in more than a century.
Considering Republicans generally underperformed expectations in other states, their historic wins in Florida speak volumes about shifting demographics.
Since DeSantis’ 2018 victory, the state has added 1.2 million new voters.
Of those, The Washington Post reports that," Democrats had a net gain of just 2,300 statewide" registrants.
One likely explanation for these numbers is the mass-exodus to the Sunshine State that occurred during the pandemic.
Nearly 330,000 people moved to Florida between April 2020 and April 2021.
While many came to escape restrictive government lockdowns in states such as New York and California, others came to enjoy the state’s low property tax and zero income tax policy.
GOP and Democratic strategists also noticed that Florida bucked the trend of states becoming bluer as their electorates became younger.
The state was one of only nine to have a higher than national average turnout among young people and one of only three Republican states on that list. In 2020, nearly half of Florida voters younger than 35 were registered Democrats. That number dropped to 26% in 2022.
Compare these numbers to national numbers ("18-to-29-year-olds . . . prefer Democratic control 55%-34%" according to the Harvard Youth Poll), and we see further proof that the Great Decoupling is well underway.
Rather than stay in a state that is hostile to their values, voters are opting to relocate to someplace new.
We see this not only in Florida, but also in Texas, where despite average turnout for Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, the GOP performed remarkably well, sweeping statewide offices handily.
As The Texas Tribune concluded, the Lone Star State "is still far from turning blue."
Republicans also performed well in Tennessee, predictably clinching several top races.
There’s no question about it — America is going through a national divorce.
We are separating and regrouping at historic rates, and that is not a bad thing.
After all, why should middle-class families be expected to pay outrageously high taxes in states like California and New York when there are plenty of better options?
Why should parents stick around in a state that refuses to protect their children from sexualized education? Why should young people waste their youth in a place that keeps them locked in their homes because of a virus?
This does not mean that we give up on America, rather we quit trying to force the outdated idea that we must all think alike and be governed alike. It means we take the mindset the Founding Fathers had, and how they expected America to look.
The Founders were well aware of the geographic, cultural and demographic differences that were already well established at the founding of our nation.
The early states had a distrust of each other and often disagreed-hence Rhode Island's nickname of Rogue Island. The Founding Fathers didn’t seek to override those differences–they embraced them — creating a government that empowered local states to take the lead in governance.
But there is one massive catch: the Washington D.C. bureaucracy is not about to relinquish its control of the American people that it has gained over the last century.
The federal government’s top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions are tearing us apart because they effectively reverse what Americans are trying to do via the great decoupling — that is, to get away from government policy and governance they disagree with.
Voters flee blue states to escape radical "education" but Washington wants uniform, progressive education in all states.
They take refuge in Florida, hoping to find respite from sweeping lockdowns and mandates, but President Biden, with a stroke of his pen, tries to dictate that the entire country must take an experimental drug. This is the unfortunate reality of states trying to exert their authority while under a bloated federal leviathan.
The Founders anticipated this eventuality and included Article 5 in the Constitution, allowing states to reassert their local control and roll back Federal overreach.
So even as we vote with our feet, we must not give up fighting on the national level.
We must force Washington to release its grip.
This year’s midterm may have seemed like a setback in that regard, but 2022 is just the beginning. If the great decoupling is teaching us anything, it’s that many Americans are still fiercely independent.
They will not sit by and let others tell them how to live.
Or what to think.
Or what to teach their kids.
Now is not the time to go along with the status quo. And the American people know that.
It's time for us to push the D.C. Deep State back into the box it sprang from and save this great nation for all Americans.
Mark Meckler is president of Convention of States. Read Mark Meckler's Reports — More Here.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.