Amazing chart from the NY Times:
For generations, the story of the small rural town of the Great Plains, including the dusty tabletop landscape of western Kansas, has been one of exodus — of businesses closing, classrooms shrinking and, year after year, communities withering as fewer people arrive than leave and as fewer are born than are buried. That flight continues, but another demographic trend has breathed new life into the region.
Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed the decline in the white population in many places. In the process, these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that seemed to be staggering toward the grave.
The towns that embrace these new residents will reverse years of decline, while those that don't will die.
And this change is happening, whether longtime residents agree or disagree. Now look at those states—it's pretty solid GOP for the most part. As the Latino population grows, it'll have an impact in the politics of those states. The question Republicans will continue to have is whether they will accept this new America, or whether they will continue to agitate against it.