Texas is on track to overtake California and become the most populous state in the Union by 2045, according to a report published earlier this month by real estate company Realtor.com—which recently shifted its own headquarters to Austin from the Golden State.
Based on a combination of U.S. Census Bureau figures and its own data, Realtor.com predicted Texas’ population will hit 42 million that year—a 35 percent increase from its current figure of just under 31 million.
Such a shift could have a profound impact on the politics and culture of not just Texas but the United States as a whole, with one state politics expert telling Newsweek it would result in greater congressional representation and a campaigner claiming it could strengthen separatist sentiment in the Lone Star State.
Newsweek contacted Texas Governor Greg Abbott via email for comment.
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty
Population Boom
Texas has seen its population swell over the past decade with residents increasing by nearly four million between 2013 and 2023, more than any other state. Between July 2023 and July 2024, Texas’ population increased by another 562,941 according to Census Bureau data, giving it an annualized growth rate of 1.8 percent; the third highest in the Union behind Florida and the District of Columbia.
Between July 2020 and July 2024, Census Bureau figures show the state’s population rose from 29.1 million to 31.3 million, an increase of almost four eight percent in just four years.
According to Realtor.com, the COVID era—in which health restrictions were more lax in Texas than many Democratic-run states—sparked a surge in internal migration. In 2019 around 20 percent of the company’s home shoppers came from out of state, but this surged to 33 percent by April 2023.
A particularly notable source of internal migration has been California, with around 102,000 people moving from the Golden State to the Lone Star State in 2022 alone, according to the Texas Realtors’ 2024 Texas Relocation Report. The phenomenon has become so common it even has its own name, Texafornia.
An analysis of Census Bureau data by Realtor.com concluded that the highest proportion of California to Texas movers (37 percent) made the decision for a change of climate. This was followed by a new job or job transfer (36 percent), a desire to own a home rather than rent (31 percent) and a job loss or job search (10 percent).
Crime has also been cited as a factor, with California experiencing a 30 percent increase in its homicide rate between 2019 and 2020 according to FBI figures. Over the same period, Texas Department of Public Safety figures show crime in the state fell by four percent.
Thomas Gift, a political scientist who runs the Centre on US Politics at University College London, told Newsweek: “Texas’ growing population is driven by a warm climate, a robust economy and comparatively affordable cost of living, as well as immigration.”
Economic Growth
The Texan economy has also boomed over the last few years, outperforming the U.S. economy as a whole, according to figures compiled by Statista. In 2020, as coronavirus struck, Texas saw its economy shrink by 1.8 percent, notably less than the national figure of 3.5 percent. It then burst to life in 2021, growing by 5.9 percent, followed by 3.9 percent in 2022 and 7.4 percent in 2023.
Over the past few years a number of companies have shifted their corporate headquarters to Texas from California, including Chevron and Charles Schwab Corp.
In July 2024 Elon Musk announced he was moving the headquarters of X, formerly Twitter, and SpaceX to Texas in response to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s approval of a bill that stops teachers being required to inform parents if their children change their gender identity.
In an X post, Musk said: “This is the final straw. Because of this law and many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas.” Musk is now a close ally of President Donald Trump and heads up the recently formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
One area in which the Texan economy is particularly buoyant is housebuilding, with the state accounting for 15 percent of all home building approvals across the U.S. in 2024, according to Realtor.com, despite only having nine percent of the country’s population.
The company reported that as a result, as of December 2024, the median list price for property in Texas was $360,000—around $40,000 below the national average.
Joshua Blank, who heads the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told Newsweek: “Texas has what few other states can truly offer: a dynamic job market spread across multiple metropolitan areas within the same state, and affordable housing, at least when compared to places like California and New York.”
Political Power
Texas’ booming population has already seen its political influence strengthen, with the state picking up two additional seats in the House of Representatives and two new Electoral College votes following the 2020 U.S. Census.
As both are awarded on the basis of population, if the Lone Star State continues outperforming national population growth then it will see its influence increase further.
“The process by which demographic change results in political change is a slow one,” Blank said. “But Texas is already a rapidly diversifying state with a young population, largely concentrated in and around its metropolitan areas.
“While overtaking California in population will have a direct consequence on the weight Texas has in national discussions due to the sheer size of its congressional delegation, the factors driving change in Texas are already in place, and moving ahead—even if the speed of that change is slow.”
Over the past decade prominent Democrats have expressed the hope that demographic changes, in particular the surging Hispanic population, could make Texas competitive for the party. However, in the 2024 presidential election Trump made significant gains with Hispanic and Black voters.
“For years, the conventional wisdom held that as more people flock to Texas, the state would naturally shift toward the Democrats,” Gift said. “Yet as Republicans make progress courting more diverse demographics, that assumption may no longer be true.”
On the national stage, the relative success of prominent Republican-controlled states such as Texas and Florida has been compared with the relative stagnation of some Democratic states. In the year to July 2022, Florida and Texas saw their populations increase by 1.9 percent and 1.6 percent respectively, while Democratic-dominated California, New York, Illinois and Oregon recorded falls over the same period.
Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images
Speaking to Newsweek Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement which advocates for Texan independence, suggested that the state’s growing strength could increase tensions with the federal government.
He said: “The projected population growth simply confirms what we’re seeing on the ground: Texas works. People have been voting with their feet and moving to Texas for generations, drawn by our unique culture, values and opportunities.
“But this growth also highlights a serious challenge. We’re already sending billions more to Washington than we get back each year. Under the federal system, more growth just means more Texans’ hard-earned dollars being siphoned away to prop up failed policies in other states.
“For Texas to properly manage this growth and preserve what makes us special, we need the freedom to govern ourselves according to our own values and priorities, not those of bureaucrats in Washington.”
Texan nationalists have had a number of prominent victories over the past year, most notably in June 2024 when the Republican Party of Texas announced that introducing a bill calling for an independence referendum would be a “legislative priority” in the next session of the Texas Legislature.
Cultural Shift
Texas has seen profound demographic shifts over recent decades which look set to continue and perhaps even intensity.
U.S. Census figures released in 2023 found Hispanics were Texas’ biggest single demographic group in July 2022, making up 40.2 percent of the state’s population against 39.8 percent for non-Hispanic white Texans. This change has been accompanied by profound cultural change, with food and practices generally associated with Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries becoming more common in the state.
The Texan population is also aging, which is likely to have a significant impact on the state’s culture. Projections from the Texas Demographic Center indicate that between 2023 and 2050 the number of Texans aged 65 and over will rise by 88 percent, while the number aged 45-64 will increase by 57 percent.
