Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics

A fellow former Californian wise enough to move to Texas told me I should check out Shawn Ryan’s mid-July podcast interview of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. She texted, “…the world needs someone like u to call out his self-serving use of facts and lies.”

At the top of the podcast, Ryan jokingly asked if Newsom flew to Tennessee to “…hang out with the 92,000 Californians?”

Newsom, deeply stung by California’s massive three straight years of net outmigration, was quick to claim a thin victory, saying, “You hit me right there, man. The California exit. By the way, complete bullshit now. The last two years, we’ve seen significant growth in California’s population. So. it’s reversed.”

Really? Let’s take a look. Data from the Public Policy Institute of California indicates that between July 2023 and July 2024, California’s population grew by 49,000 people, an anemic 0.13% increase. Newsom is likely claiming further growth through July of this year. This followed after a three-year decline of 412,000 people between July 2020 and July 2023—8.4 times the amount of growth the year before. The growth California did see last year was composed of a net gain of 361,057 international immigrants—including former President Joe Biden’s tsunami of illegal aliens—offsetting a domestic out-migration of 239,575 residents in 2024 plus natural births and deaths.

Newsom’s use of the term “significant growth” is doing a lot of work here. While California’s continued net out-migration to states like Texas and Florida persist, screaming underlying dissatisfaction with California’s high cost of living and taxes.

Newsom also brought up California’s “record-breaking tourism” in 2024. OK, what’s that about? Tourism spending reached $157.3 billion in 2024, a 3% increase from 2023, according to Visit California. But the Consumer Price Index was up 2.9% in 2024 while the inflation rate for the hospitality industry that year was 3.5%. Ooops. That means that inflation-adjusted tourism spending in California was down in 2024, not up, courtesy of Bidenflation. Projections for 2025 indicate a 1% dip in visitation to California, likely requiring a revised set of talking points for the long-winded Golden State Gabbler.

Newsom’s brag about California being the “fourth largest economy in the world” is accurate, just as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s brag about California being the eighth largest, and then seventh largest economy in the world back when I served in the California State Assembly. But this boast is more about the moribund economies in socialist Europe than it is about how successful California is.

The Public Policy Institute of California notes that California’s economic growth averaged 2.3% annually from 2020 to 2023. But this is far slower than Florida’s 4.6% and Texas’s 3.9% over the same period.

On the topic of California’s response to COVID-19, Newsom spared no truth. Newsom said he keeps bringing up Florida, “…because I think there’s sort of this sort of triumphant new narrative. It’s all mythmaking. It’s all storytelling narrative. There’s some truth to it, but there’s a lot of bullshit about it. You know, Florida had worse educational outcomes during COVID than California. Kids did worse on reading and math scores. Fact. Three out of the four areas, fourth grade reading and eighth grade reading and math, three out of the four categories California outperformed. From a health perspective, they (Florida) had more per capita deaths than California.”

What Newsom is claiming here is that Florida saw larger declines in its national report card, the NAEP scores, for 2022 than did California. True—but Florida’s scores were far higher than California’s to begin with. Newsom here is claiming victory because, out of scores generally in the 200s, Florida saw declines of 3 to 7 points while California declines were one point less in each category. That said, Florida’s students test better than California’s while Florida’s students show higher proficiency levels.

Newsom’s claim about per capita COVID deaths is a classic case of lies, damn lies, and statistics. The Wuhan lab China virus typically killed older Americans—Florida has the fifth-oldest state by average (42.7 in 2020) while California is tied for 40^th (37.3 in 2020). Florida’s age-adjusted COVID deathrate was a bit lower than California’s over the three years of the pandemic.

Whenever Newsom cites a statistic, know this: he’s using a blizzard of numbers to hide the ugly truth.

Chuck DeVore is Chief National Initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He served in the California State Assembly and is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. He’s the author of “Crisis of the House Never United.”

 The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.