America's Air-Conditioned Nightmare

Editor's Note: This is Part II of a two-part series on how air-conditioning has changed American society. Read Part I here.

In 1950, the string of nine coastal Sun Belt states from Virginia to Texas, plus New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, had a combined population of 33 million, less than half the total population of the 14 New England and Rust Belt states that stretch from Maine to Minnesota. By 2002, the population of the 12 Sun Belt states had doubled and then grown by a third more, to 88 million -- almost as many people as then lived in those 14 northern states.

For many migrants, mild southern winters have always been the big attraction. But the price to be paid in summer discomfort is high. The "thermometer" below ranks the major cities across the two regions according to their average summer high temperatures. All of the hotter cities are in the Sun Belt, and all of those but Phoenix and Las Vegas can be oppressively humid in summer as well. All of the hotter cities gained population during the Age of Air-conditioning, while all of the cooler cities but New York lost. Percentage population gains are shown in green, losses in red:

Sunbelt stroke

Seats in the House of Representatives and electoral votes in presidential elections are re-allocated after each decade's census according to the relative populations of the states. In 1950, the 14 New England and Rust Belt states were apportioned 197 members in the House of Representatives, while the 13 Sun Belt states had only 96. Fifty years later, the northern states' membership had dwindled to 147, and that of the southern group had swelled to 132.

That net gain of 86 House seats by the Sun Belt over the more liberal group of northern states has had profound consequences. Of those northern states' current 175 seats in Congress (including both the House and Senate), 83 belong to Republicans, 90 to Democrats, and 2 to independents who vote mostly with the Democrats. The 13 Sun Belt states are represented by 106 Republicans and only 50 Democrats.

The effect of southbound migration on presidential politics has been even more dramatic. Each state gets as many votes in the Electoral College as it has votes in Congress. In 2004, the New England/Rust Belt states went 144-31 for Kerry (or 164-11 if you're not willing to concede Ohio's 20 votes to Bush), while the Sun Belt states went 156-0 for Bush.

Soon after the 2004 election, Hofstra University professor James Wiley wrote an op-ed titled "Blame air-conditioning for Kerry loss."

The headline overstates the case, and in the article itself, Wiley recognized that A/C was one of several factors behind the rise of the South. The economy of the Sun Belt boomed partly because that's where the government spent much of its military and aerospace budgets. The Solid South switched its allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican party not because Republicans promoted the air-conditioned lifestyle but because they appealed to race, sex, religion, and class prejudice, with an unhealthy dose of jingoism thrown in. That strategy has proven effective in the North as well as the South.

Still, the growth trajectory of the South and Southwest has closely paralleled that of the air-conditioning industry. Only a few thousand American homes had the technology in the late 1940s; 6.5 million had it by 1960; today, it's nearly universal in warm regions.

Shifting political ground

The economies of states in the humid Southeast and hot Southwest have grown twice as fast as those in the New England/Middle Atlantic/Great Lakes region in the Age of Air-conditioning, and that has shifted the political ground as well. There's no way the South could have become an economic powerhouse with high-rise cities and sprawling suburbs had there not been air-conditioning.