With just about a year of quarantine life experience under our belts, most of us are probably jubilant about the seemingly fast approaching end of this pandemic. The virus that took most of us by surprise and forced us to change our modes of interaction and communication may be leaving, but with it also leaves most of our late 20th century conception of what an office job means. 

Hybrid and remote forms of work took over the country at the start of the pandemic and for now they actually seem to be here to stay as large companies like Facebook, Apple, and Spotify  have all extended their stay at home work policies to fit more employees. Spotify for example will let its employees choose for a year whether they wish to work at a Spotify office, remotely, or at a coworking space which Spotify will actually cover for them.

According to a Mckinsey Study, out of a total of 800 executives from different sectors and from around the world, 38 percent of them expect their employees to work two or more days a week remotely as compared to 22 percent when surveyed before the pandemic. This hybrid model of work is sure to inspire masses of new first-time and experienced workers to move farther away from the typical urban centers and into the smaller and more affordable suburbs of America. Even if just a small portion of workers, about 15 to 20 percent, decide to work from home in a hybrid model, this could have magnified consequences in urban economies including big declines in “transportation, gasoline and auto sales, restaurants and retail in urban centers, demand for office real estate, and other consumption patterns.” 

The decline of the urban centers was already something that was in progress before the pandemic had hit but has vastly accelerated due to it. The “suburbanization” of America as many have called it has been happening as far back as 2017, when home ownership between older Gen Z and Millenials began to rise. Today home ownership is around 30% for 18- to 24-year-olds, up from 19% last year, and 48% for millennials, a 1% increase since 2019. 

A change in culture and a rise in technological literacy has certainly pushed employees from across the age range to yearn for more work from home where they have the ability to spend more time with loved ones. The most important implication however, that is set to arise from this is the political realignment between states that will set forth a new era in state and national politics. 

It has long been said that liberals have a density problem. While Democrats have won just about the popular vote in every election since ‘92 (only excluding Bush’s reelection in ‘04), they have still managed to lose the electoral college in two of those elections: 2000 and 2016. The areas in which the Democrats dominate, cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles,  happen to also be the areas in which are shrinking. According to data from 2019, New York City lost approximately 277 people a day, while cities like Los Angeles and Chicago lost 201 and 161 people a day respectively. For the first time since the beginning of the 20th century, both of America’s largest metro areas, NY and LA, are losing population at the same time. Just a few years ago, however, the aftermath of the Great Recession bred new life into dilapidated urban areas who were just beginning to be  gentrified with plenty of nifty expensive coffee shops and clothing boutiques. Just a few years later, you’d be hard pressed not to find that exact same atmosphere in any other trendy small southern town or city looking to attract young talented college grads. Not only has American suburbia changed and shifted to meet the new taste of the younger generations but staying in these urban areas has become too expensive especially for those beginning to want to start a family. Just in Los Angeles, house prices have increased about 75 percent since the great recession. 

The destination where most of these workers are going happens to be red cities in the South and West; cities like Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, and Orlando are all cities that Trump won either in 2016 or 2020. It is actually already possible that we have already witnessed the first big effect of this demographic shift in Arizona where Democrats shifted a deficit in populous Maricopa County by 100,000 votes in 2012 to 2016 and then turned the state blue for both the midterm and presidential elections of 2018 and 2020.

If this trend of migration continues, evaporating most of the advantage of Republicans in the south and west, it would not be very hard to see more Democratic wins across the Senate and House and executive office without that much actual change in voter turnout making the Democrats’ density problem a thing of the past.