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Democratic states moving into California and Californians mostly leaving for conservative states. Interesting. There are multiple ways to interpret though.

pcwalton 9y ago
The data's pretty mixed on that. For outflow states: Texas (#1): Solid R Arizona (#2): R Nevada (#3): Lean D Oregon, Washington (#4, #5): Solid D Colorado (#6): D Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma (#7, #8, #9): Solid R Georgia (#10): R That's 6 R, 4 D.
- ProAm 9y ago
  Colorado is a very conservative democratic state.
  - vannevar 9y ago
    It might be more accurate to say that Colorado is a very libertarian democratic state.
    - ProAm 9y ago
      For most of it's history it has voted Republican, with only the last decade or so being Democrat [1]. But the state still holds a lot of very conservative views. It's very down the middle. [1] https://www.270towin.com/states/Colorado https://www.270towin.com/states/Colorado
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- DoubleCribble 9y ago
  Oregon is interesting in that it's D because of Portland. The state is mostly conservative small cities or rural and yet the population of the Portland metro area leans so far left and has such a large population relative to the other parts of the state that it changes the entire state. Remove Portland voters from the polls and Oregon would be R.[0] [0]http://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/212726-70134-how-liberal-is-portland http://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/212726-70134-how-liberal-i...
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    You could say the same thing about lots of blue states.
    - DoubleCribble 9y ago
      Any examples? I don't know of any other state that has 1 city with such an impact on the entire state as to turn it blue.
- cobookman 9y ago
  Georgia is Republican. But Atlanta is not.
coupdetaco 9y ago
Cost of living correlates with urban life correlates with 'liberal'
commandlinefan 9y ago
Now imagine if California reverses course and enacts conservative-friendly policies - and turns into a red state.
- gumby 9y ago
  By and large califirnia is a red state: outside the major urban areas the state is mostly quote red; some urban areas (e.g. Orange county) are also quite red and those populations send conservatives to congress. But because the majority of the population do live in major urban areas you see the state legislature about 70/30 D/R and the statewide offices tend to go to the majority as well. But within recent memory there have been several republican governors, two of whom (nixon and regan) became US presidents. So though I don't see much chance of the state tipping "red" any time soon it's not an utterly outlandish idea.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    That is true of the entire US: rural areas are mostly red, urban areas are mostly blue.
    - adamrezich 9y ago
      That's the cliché but it seems a bit unfair, because in my mind, "rural" evokes small towns of 21 people and vast expanses of farm/ranch land. My hometown has a population of about ~70,000 spread out over 55 square miles (~1,300 people per square mile); is that "rural" or "urban?" What I'm getting at is, it's more precise to say "most of the US--rural and urban--is red, while the densest population centers are overwhelmingly blue."
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        The threshold from red to blue corosses at 800ppl/sqm: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/11/what-republicans-are-really-against-population-density/3953/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/11/what-republicans-are-... The definition of "urban" according to the USA census department have cores of 1000ppl/sqm and are surrounding by areas of 500ppl/sqm. So if you have a density of 1,300, then there is a higher chance the area went blue. Of course, there can be lots of exceptions, and 1,300 is rather close to the crossover point.
khawkins 9y ago
It's lower income, lower education people who are out-migrating, and those groups tend to be more right leaning on average. So if anything, the states are becoming even more uniform politically.
- randyrand 9y ago
  Education, yes. But surprisingly, "An individual’s likelihood of being a Democrat decreases with every additional dollar he or she earns." https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-democrats/ https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demogra...
phyzome 9y ago
Don't forget that a lot of those conservative states are large, and liberal states small. The data is not normalized.
- coupdetaco 9y ago
  If more dense places are more liberal, wouldn't normalizing for population density remove that insight from the reporting?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, and Florida are small now?
mywittyname 9y ago
Most other "blue" states suffer from the same problem as California: massive wealth concentration and the subsequent sky-high rents and real estate prices. I know when I was seriously considering relocating, the politics of the region wasn't a consideration. I was far more concerned about availability of jobs (and cost of living relative to what I could earn). If I were in SF and couldn't get a job at Big Tech, I'd be looking to move to a red state. Not for political reasons, just because it's better to be a median dev in a flyover state than a bottom quartile dev in SF/Seattle/NYC/etc.
- 650REDHAIR 9y ago
  That's pretty shortsighted. You still have to live in those areas, raise kids in those areas, and pay taxes in those areas. Why wouldn't you consider the local politics?
  - cobookman 9y ago
    ...you'd be able to send your kids to a better school. And your kids would be better off. California has some of the worst public schools in the country. In a red state you could send your kid to private school or afford a house in the best school districts.
    - 650REDHAIR 9y ago
      http://school-ratings.com/counties/San_Mateo.html?type=&rankFilter=9 http://school-ratings.com/counties/San_Mateo.html?type=&rank...
      - cobookman 9y ago
        https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/05/california-schools-earn-c-in-national-ranking/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/05/california-schools-ea... California has some great schools, but in those districts you’ll pay a huge premium. For example Sunnyvale homes are 1mil more than East Palo Alto homes. So you either end up paying for private school. Or pay the same amount more for a more expensive home.
LyndsySimon 9y ago
I was hoping someone else would make this connection in the comments. What I see happening is a slow but steady demographic shift based on politics. I know my own recent move from Virginia to Arkansas was largely because of this, and statistics from the past few elections have been showing a decrease in the number of "swing" counties. Communities are becoming more politically homogenous. I wonder if this happened prior to the US Civil War, and if there were even enough data collected to accurately measure it.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Communities are becoming more politically homogenous. I wonder if this happened prior to the US Civil War Not particularly; compared to today, US states, in national partisan terms, were more homogenous for most of the history of the nation; this got a bit shook up with the New Deal Coalition and further when the LBJ committed to civil rights and then Republicans targeted the Democrats disaffected segregationist base. Greater political homogeneity is just a reversion to historical norms after some mid-20th Century disruptions.

pcwalton 9y ago

The data's pretty mixed on that. For outflow states: Texas (#1): Solid R Arizona (#2): R Nevada (#3): Lean D Oregon, Washington (#4, #5): Solid D Colorado (#6): D Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma (#7, #8, #9): Solid R Georgia (#10): R That's 6 R, 4 D.

ProAm 9y ago
Colorado is a very conservative democratic state.
- vannevar 9y ago
  It might be more accurate to say that Colorado is a very libertarian democratic state.
  - ProAm 9y ago
    For most of it's history it has voted Republican, with only the last decade or so being Democrat [1]. But the state still holds a lot of very conservative views. It's very down the middle. [1] https://www.270towin.com/states/Colorado https://www.270towin.com/states/Colorado
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
DoubleCribble 9y ago
Oregon is interesting in that it's D because of Portland. The state is mostly conservative small cities or rural and yet the population of the Portland metro area leans so far left and has such a large population relative to the other parts of the state that it changes the entire state. Remove Portland voters from the polls and Oregon would be R.[0] [0]http://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/212726-70134-how-liberal-is-portland http://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/212726-70134-how-liberal-i...
- pcwalton 9y ago
  You could say the same thing about lots of blue states.
  - DoubleCribble 9y ago
    Any examples? I don't know of any other state that has 1 city with such an impact on the entire state as to turn it blue.
cobookman 9y ago
Georgia is Republican. But Atlanta is not.

coupdetaco 9y ago

Cost of living correlates with urban life correlates with 'liberal'

commandlinefan 9y ago

Now imagine if California reverses course and enacts conservative-friendly policies - and turns into a red state.

gumby 9y ago
By and large califirnia is a red state: outside the major urban areas the state is mostly quote red; some urban areas (e.g. Orange county) are also quite red and those populations send conservatives to congress. But because the majority of the population do live in major urban areas you see the state legislature about 70/30 D/R and the statewide offices tend to go to the majority as well. But within recent memory there have been several republican governors, two of whom (nixon and regan) became US presidents. So though I don't see much chance of the state tipping "red" any time soon it's not an utterly outlandish idea.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  That is true of the entire US: rural areas are mostly red, urban areas are mostly blue.
  - adamrezich 9y ago
    That's the cliché but it seems a bit unfair, because in my mind, "rural" evokes small towns of 21 people and vast expanses of farm/ranch land. My hometown has a population of about ~70,000 spread out over 55 square miles (~1,300 people per square mile); is that "rural" or "urban?" What I'm getting at is, it's more precise to say "most of the US--rural and urban--is red, while the densest population centers are overwhelmingly blue."
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      The threshold from red to blue corosses at 800ppl/sqm: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/11/what-republicans-are-really-against-population-density/3953/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/11/what-republicans-are-... The definition of "urban" according to the USA census department have cores of 1000ppl/sqm and are surrounding by areas of 500ppl/sqm. So if you have a density of 1,300, then there is a higher chance the area went blue. Of course, there can be lots of exceptions, and 1,300 is rather close to the crossover point.

khawkins 9y ago

It's lower income, lower education people who are out-migrating, and those groups tend to be more right leaning on average. So if anything, the states are becoming even more uniform politically.

randyrand 9y ago
Education, yes. But surprisingly, "An individual’s likelihood of being a Democrat decreases with every additional dollar he or she earns." https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-democrats/ https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demogra...

phyzome 9y ago

Don't forget that a lot of those conservative states are large, and liberal states small. The data is not normalized.

coupdetaco 9y ago
If more dense places are more liberal, wouldn't normalizing for population density remove that insight from the reporting?
dragonwriter 9y ago
New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, and Florida are small now?

mywittyname 9y ago

Most other "blue" states suffer from the same problem as California: massive wealth concentration and the subsequent sky-high rents and real estate prices. I know when I was seriously considering relocating, the politics of the region wasn't a consideration. I was far more concerned about availability of jobs (and cost of living relative to what I could earn). If I were in SF and couldn't get a job at Big Tech, I'd be looking to move to a red state. Not for political reasons, just because it's better to be a median dev in a flyover state than a bottom quartile dev in SF/Seattle/NYC/etc.

650REDHAIR 9y ago
That's pretty shortsighted. You still have to live in those areas, raise kids in those areas, and pay taxes in those areas. Why wouldn't you consider the local politics?
- cobookman 9y ago
  ...you'd be able to send your kids to a better school. And your kids would be better off. California has some of the worst public schools in the country. In a red state you could send your kid to private school or afford a house in the best school districts.
  - 650REDHAIR 9y ago
    http://school-ratings.com/counties/San_Mateo.html?type=&rankFilter=9 http://school-ratings.com/counties/San_Mateo.html?type=&rank...
    - cobookman 9y ago
      https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/05/california-schools-earn-c-in-national-ranking/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/05/california-schools-ea... California has some great schools, but in those districts you’ll pay a huge premium. For example Sunnyvale homes are 1mil more than East Palo Alto homes. So you either end up paying for private school. Or pay the same amount more for a more expensive home.

LyndsySimon 9y ago

I was hoping someone else would make this connection in the comments. What I see happening is a slow but steady demographic shift based on politics. I know my own recent move from Virginia to Arkansas was largely because of this, and statistics from the past few elections have been showing a decrease in the number of "swing" counties. Communities are becoming more politically homogenous. I wonder if this happened prior to the US Civil War, and if there were even enough data collected to accurately measure it.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Communities are becoming more politically homogenous. I wonder if this happened prior to the US Civil War Not particularly; compared to today, US states, in national partisan terms, were more homogenous for most of the history of the nation; this got a bit shook up with the New Deal Coalition and further when the LBJ committed to civil rights and then Republicans targeted the Democrats disaffected segregationist base. Greater political homogeneity is just a reversion to historical norms after some mid-20th Century disruptions.