The Sunshine State is preparing for a different sort of blue wave.
Continuing years of scorching population growth, Florida is bracing for a fresh batch of disgruntled citizens fed up with spiraling crime and high taxes to move in from Democratic strongholds.
Figures obtained by The Post show that through August, a record 41,885 New Yorkers already swapped their licenses for the Florida version, a commonly used indicator of demographic trends. That figure was 21,277 for California, 16,970 for Pennsylvania and 16,846 for Illinois.
Sunshine State observers said after Tuesday saw Democratic leaders re-elected or voted in — coupled with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s landslide entrenchment — they expect the exodus to Florida will continue.
“People are leaving these states for a lot of different reasons,” said Laura Gambino of One Sotheby’s International in Palm Beach.
“Crime, quality of life, taxes. I think with the elections going the way they did, the trend is going to continue.
“It’s good for us, for the state and its economy. It’s not so good for states that were already losing people.
New York City parent activist Jean Hahn said that her Whatsapp group of several hundred moms and dads was ablaze Wednesday morning after Gov. Kathy Hochul defeated challenger Lee Zeldin.
“A lot of people are saying that they’re hopeless at this point,” she said. “They’re already looking at listings, ways they can get out. There is just a lot of frustration.”
One member of the group, a mother of three from Brighton Beach in New York City, told The Post that she plans to exit the state whenever a move become feasible.
“For a lot of parents, the line in the sand is a vaccine mandate to attend school,” she said. “If that happens, there will be an exodus.”
Another participant, an Upper East Side parent of two, said the city is becoming “unlivable” for families — and that Hochul’s election set off frenzied searches on property website Zillow among her circle of friends.
“The crime, the mandates, the general insanity,” she said. “I think people are just looking at their lives and thinking there has to be a better place to raise their children.”
Illinois native Robert Cowhey, who left the state for Florida a decade ago said his son, who lives in Chicago, was plotting his departure Wednesday morning after Gov. J.B. Pritzker re-election.
“I talked to my son and my cousin today,” he said. “They want out. Crime is a major issue. They don’t like Pritzker, they don’t like Lori Lightfoot, they don’t like any of it. I think people are just going to continue to leave.”
Florida Atlantic University Prof. Ken Johnson, who specializes in migration trends, said he expects outside interest in the state to persist due its recent economic development and diversification.
“From what I hear on the ground, people come to Florida because it’s prospering,” he said. “It used to be the sunshine. Now it’s the sunshine and the economy.”
Billionaire hedge fund boss Ken Griffin moved his firm from Chicago to Palm Beach this year after sounding the alarm on spiraling crime in the Windy City.
In a talk with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Monday night, Griffin described moving the finance mammoth’s operations to a Palm Beach hotel ballroom in the early days of the pandemic, according to the Real Deal.
He said 200 people worked to outfit the space around the clock, and that the effort reminded him of “when this country strove for greatness.”
“In Chicago, it takes five years to build a bike overpass,” Griffin said.
