Census Data: Washington, DC, Suffers Nation’s Largest Percentage Decline in Population

Washington, DC, suffered the nation’s greatest percentage decline in population, 2021 U.S. census data released Tuesday indicated.

As high crime and coronavirus mandates have plagued the District over the past year, the District shrank 2.9 percent, or by 20,043 residents, in 2021.

The population decline was due to domestic migration to southern states, where crime is less prevalent and coronavirus mandates are less common, the census indicated.

The District was not the only place Americans abandoned. California (-367,299), New York (-352,185), and Illinois (-122,460) — all Democrat-controlled states — sustained the largest population migration decrease in real numbers.

In total, 20 states and the District dropped residents through domestic migration. “This is a historically large number of states to lose population in a year,” the census analyzed.

As Americans left Democrat-controlled states, they fled south to red states. The greatest domestic migration increases were in Florida (220,890), Texas (170,307), and Arizona (93,026):

The South, with a population of 127,225,329, was the most populous of the four regions (encompassing 38.3% of the total national population) and was the only region that had positive net domestic migration of 657,682 (the movement of people from one area to another within the United States) between 2020 and 2021. 

Texas benefited the most from the Democrat state exodus. In the past year, 170,307 people domestically migrated to Texas. The state realized the largest annual and cumulative numeric gain, and had a population of 29,527,941 in 2021.

Overall, the three most populated states are California (39,237,836), Texas (29,527,941), and Florida (21,781,128). New York fell out of the top three spots, decreasing from 20,154,933 to 19,835,913.

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