How COVID Relocations Could Swing the Election
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How COVID Relocations Could Swing the Election
In the years since COVID-19 first swept across the country, millions of Americans have packed up their belongings and relocated. City dwellers have become suburbanites, people from both big cities and high-cost suburbs have moved to more rural areas, remote work has flourished (although the tide may be ebbing back on that), and countless Americans have taken the chance to reinvent their lives in places they would have never even considered before.
Some 26 million Americans relocated in 2020 alone, with many more moving over the subsequent three years, a surge in moves unseen in decades. It’s a reshuffling that might mean more than just a change in scenery; it could alter the very landscape of electoral politics.
Consider Texas. Once firmly red, the state has shifted purple as more left-leaning transplants from places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago set up shop in Austin, Houston, and Dallas. Though Texas has been won by the Republican candidate in every presidential election going back to 1976, it is likely that the influx of younger, progressive residents could speed up an already emerging trend toward purple. If Democrats manage to turn Texas blue, it would be one of the most significant electoral shifts in a generation.
But a blue Texas is probably at least one or two presidential election cycles away. What does the landscape look here in 2024? For Republicans lamenting the potential shift of such a key electoral state, there are reasons to be glad in other areas of the country. It wasn’t long ago that the two most important toss-up states in presidential elections were Ohio and Florida. But today? Both of those states are solidly Republican and Trump is almost certain to win both on November 5th regardless of whether he wins the overall election or not.
There are examples on the opposite side of the aisle, too. Michigan and Pennsylvania, which have demographics similar to what is now a reliably red Ohio, have both similarly trended from blue to at least purple, if not a bit red. Pennsylvania went to the Democrat in every presidential cycle going back to 1992 except for one: 2016, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. So important is Pennsylvania to the overall election results that over $500 million has been spent on the presidential campaign this year with the two major candidates virtually taking up semi-permanent residence in the state to barnstorm from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and everywhere in between.
Other states that were not typically in play as toss-ups years ago are now likely to swing the whole election here in 2024. Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina: these were states that typically went red from 1980 to 2020, but are now all in play as true toss-up’s.
Tracking the Movement: a Story of Blue to Red
To be sure, there is more going on in all of these states politically than just COVID-related movements of people. Every single state is its own political scientist’s dream, petri dishes of demographics, economics, campaign tactics, and ground games that will be studied for generations to come.
But on the topic at hand for today, there is no doubt about it: millions of Americans moved from blue states to red states during the pandemic. In fact, based on U.S. Postal Service data, 10 of the top 12 cities with the most net out-migration of residents since 2020 are in blue states, with only Dallas and Austin hitting the list of red-state cities with notable outflows (and most of that out-migration has been within the last year or two):
This has implications, not necessarily because it represents a loss of voters for these outgoing cities (they are still very blue), but because of where these movers went to. The answer? Mostly to red states like Florida and purplish states like Arizona among other similar states in the South and West. The chart below shows the top net in-migration cities in the country, which are almost entirely in red states:
At least intuitively, this demographic trend favors the Democrats: you have a lot of people who likely have mostly progressive values moving to red states, thereby adding more blue votes to these conservative areas, which could either swing the balance or at least water down the conservative dominance. The arrival of thousands of mostly Democratic voters in toss-up states like Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina could be enough to put those states in the Harris column this November (Biden won Arizona and Georgia in 2020, while Trump won North Carolina).
However, there is a counter-variable at play, too, which could provide a boost to Republicans in some of these states. The goal of working from home in a lower cost, less dense area was not the only variable at play with people moving all over the country over the past few years. In the early days of the pandemic, many others moved from blue states to red states because of their perceptions of COVID restrictions and the desire to be in a looser, less restrictive environment. Sure, a lot of others probably moved for the weather and lifestyle, but lockdown restrictions (or lack thereof) were certainly a part of it. I had three different sets of friends here in Maine, for example, a state that had moderately stringent lockdown rules relative to others parts of the country and is what would probably be considered a purplish-blue state overall, who moved to Florida, Tennessee, and Texas, respectively, with COVID-related values as one of the driving variables (and if not COVID-restrictions, specifically, the state’s attitude on the pandemic was a reflection of other conservative values these friends carried themselves, hence their moves to these red states). These movers are not likely to be Democratic voters; in fact, just the opposite. I think this is actually one reason why Florida has become more conservative. Whereas the Sunshine State was a toss-up in 2000 (famously), it has become more conservative in part because so many conservative people have moved there in the 2+ decades since.
I am actually of the opinion that there is a great demographic sort-out taking place that will not only have major implications on our politics, but is actually a bit worrying from a sense of social cohesion and mutual understanding of our fellow community members, and that is the dynamic of people self-selecting where to live through the lens of red vs. blue. Conservatives are self-selecting to live in places like Florida, while progressives are choosing places in the Northeast, parts of the Midwest, and places in the West like Colorado, Montana, and Idaho. This is an important topic for another time; if we can’t live together side by side with people who share different political values, however, what hope is there for the social and political cohesion of the country as a whole?
The key question for the upcoming presidential election is this: were there more blue or red voters that moved into the key swing states, which could therefore potentially swing the election based on the influx of new voters in each of these places. I don’t have data that breaks down the political values of the tens of millions of movers over the past few years, but I suspect there is an edge for the the Democrats based on the massive waves of people who moved out of California and New York, specifically, and who ended up in red states in the South and West. If come Election Night the margin is razor thin in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, in particular, it may be the most recent new residents of these states that are the ones swinging the balance and, with it, control of the White House.
Ben Sprague lives and works in Bangor, Maine as a Senior V.P./Commercial Lending Officer for Damariscotta-based First National Bank. He previously worked as an investment advisor and graduated from Harvard University in 2006. Ben can be reached at ben.sprague@thefirst.com or bsprague1@gmail.com.
Weekly Round-Up
Here are a few things that caught my eye this week:
Thank you for the big positive response to last week’s article about the challenges of owning a restaurant. It quickly became one of my most read articles ever. My local newspaper, the Bangor Daily News printed a modified version, which you can read here.
Fall home sales have been very modest, to put it mildly. Prices are edging downward, especially in certain parts of the country, and inventory is ticking up. I will come back to this topic soon.
I am tired from staying up too late watching sports. But, on Friday night, millions of Americans got to experience one of those moments that will live in sports history forever courtesy of Freddie Freeman, who hit a walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series. Freeman missed 8 games earlier in the season after taking an emergency leave of absence to be with his sick three-year old, who was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition. Via MLB.com:
Three months ago, a moment like this looked impossible for Freeman. After a game in late July, Freeman got a text from his wife, Chelsea, that their youngest son, Maximus, wasn’t doing well. As a family, they rushed their 3-year-old son to the emergency room…
A couple of days later, as the team prepared to play against the Astros in Houston, Freeman sat alone in the dining room. He wouldn’t move or talk. His son’s health had gotten worse. Two hours before the game, Freeman rushed out to the airport to fly back to Los Angeles. Freeman then missed more than a week as he tended to the situation.
At the time, nobody knew how long Freeman would be out. There was even a possibility that he wouldn’t return for the rest of the season. All of it was contingent on the health of his son.
Months later, Maximus is pretty close to a full recovery.
Freeman also said on the field in the immediate post-game interview, “He has been there every day since I was a little boy, throwing batting practice to me every day. This isn’t my moment. It’s my dad’s moment.”
With the decline in network television and the ubiquitousness of streaming content online, there aren’t as many moments that unite Americans in collective entertainment and awe at the same precise moment in time as there once were. Live sports are perhaps the only place this still happens. I may have been up way too late on Friday night to watch this extra inning game, but it was one of the most exciting sports moments I’ve ever seen, and one of the most moving non-New England (i.e. Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins) sports moments I’ve watched. Good luck to the Dodgers the rest of the way. I’ll be rooting for you.
Have a great week, everybody, and a Happy Halloween! Here is a throwback to Halloween 2022, when our family dressed as Harry, Hermoine, McGonagall, Dumbledore, and a stubborn Spider-Man.
This is an interesting discussion. I assume that the better polls take into consideration demographic shifts resulting from migration, but it could nevertheless add an additional layer of complexity to an election cycle that already has unusual cross-currents.
For example, the other day a prominent Nevada pundit said that he was less confident in predicting the outcome of his state's presidential race because of recent in-migration that undercut the Democrats' traditional voter-registration advantage.
I would be cautious about drawing too many conclusions about in-migration in the absence of decent polling. For example, a Montana newspaper recently reported that for every two Democrats moving to the state there were three Republicans. That may help explain why a long-time Democratic U.S. senator is looking increasingly like he may lose his reelection bid -- and potentially swing the Senate to Republican control.
By the same token, I read somewhere that Idaho's in-migration appeared to be primarily helping Republicans. However, I get the impression from local Reddit discussions that this can play out in complex ways, e.g., what is considered "conservative" in southern California can look somewhat different in rural Idaho.
Partisan sorting may be occurring at the state level to some degree, but I suspect that the urban/rural divide may be just as important. As a case in point, all of the west coast states have deep blue urban areas surrounded by deep red rural areas. The suburbs tend to be more purple -- and determine state-level elections.
I live in Washington state. What I've noticed is that the pandemic helped to accelerate population growth in some rural parts of the state such as on the Olympic Peninsula. This was partly spurred by people in urban areas such as Seattle who were now able to telecommute, but there has also been a wave of retirees from California. A number of communities have had blue shifts in recent elections, but I don't know to what degree that has been influenced by in-migration.
I offer the above example because I wonder if migration might end up being a partisan mixed bag over time, perhaps to the degree that the blue versus red urban/rural divide could be reduced in at least some parts of the nation. For example, a rural community with relatively low housing prices, appealing recreation amenities and good broadband could gain an influx of younger and more liberal residents who can telecommute.
A real PDF piece (pretty damn fascinating)! Significant data weaves forming a strong pattern to follow. That said, what strikes me the most about this year's election is that it will be decided by an extremely small number of voters-= and that is truly concerning!