Many U.S. states that voted Republican in 2016 could be flipped to blue if a few big tech companies located campuses there, given the influx of new tech workers who overwhelmingly vote Democrat. I explored the potential electoral impacts of Amazon locating its second headquarters in either low-population red states or high-population “light red” states. Now Apple is announcing a second headquarters to be located outside of California (and Texas).
If the two companies coordinated their siting efforts, it could have a big impact on both the United States Senate and presidential elections going forward. According to Newsweek, Apple’s new facility will bring 20,000 tech workers (plus spouses and associated tech industries to support the campus) to the new state. Add that to the 50,000 workers in Amazon’s new campus, and you have a potentially pretty big demographic shift favoring Democrats.
Amazon already announced that it narrowed its list of candidates to 20 cities. Based on my earlier analysis, the most impactful cities on that list include any in the “purple” states:
- Columbus, Ohio
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Miami, Florida
- Raleigh, North Carolina
Second-most impactful would be citing the headquarters in states that are slowly losing their Republican demographic advantage and could “flip” relatively soon (next decade or so):
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Austin, Texas & Dallas, Texas
- Indianapolis, Indiana
- Nashville, Tennessee
Not helpful, from an electoral standpoint, would be citing in any of these solid blue states/jurisdictions:
- Denver, Colorado
- Los Angeles, California
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Chicago, Illinois
- Montgomery County, Maryland
- New York City, New York
- Newark, New Jersey
- Northern Virginia, Virginia
- Washington D.C.
And of course, REALLY not helpful to American politics would be citing the facility in Toronto, Ontario.
To the extent that these tech companies see it as in their interest to have more Democrats elected to Congress and the presidency, they could coordinate their expansion plans. Campaign contributions and lobbying are obviously another way to influence the process, but it’s hard to beat the impact of hundreds of thousands of new voters arriving in a single state.
