FiveThirtyEight: Migration Isn't Turning Red States Blue
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Author Topic: FiveThirtyEight: Migration Isn't Turning Red States Blue  (Read 1898 times)
JRP1994
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« on: August 29, 2014, 03:42:25 PM »

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/migration-isnt-turning-red-states-blue/

"Still, to the extent migration has mattered, it has probably been in contributing to political polarization rather than blurring the country into shades of purple. This fits with the idea proposed in the book “The Big Sort”: People are increasingly living near those who are politically like-minded. A 18-year-old from South Carolina might go to college in Boston if she has liberal political leanings or stay in South Carolina if she’s more conservative. The patterns can be self-reinforcing. If liberal residents are more likely to leave South Carolina, that means a higher percentage of the ones who remain are conservatives.

The “Big Sort” hypothesis has its own problems; it’s unclear how the causality works, for example. Does the 18-year-old become more liberal once she gets to California, or is she more inclined to move to California because she was already liberal? (We’ve been a little slippery about this distinction here.) We’ll be on the lookout for further research, especially for data that looks at states rather than census regions.

But let’s not add the liberal diaspora to the emerging Democratic majority theory yet."
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Rockefeller GOP
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« Reply #1 on: August 29, 2014, 04:20:24 PM »

Sounds like the theory they try to refute has as much evidence as theirs.
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Person Man
Angry_Weasel
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« Reply #2 on: August 29, 2014, 11:26:50 PM »

Sounds like the theory they try to refute has as much evidence as theirs.

Or at least- it depends. It probably works on smaller and mid sized states that weren't R+10 but maybe R+5. For example, Texas is very big and conservative, it would be very challenging to take it. States like Virginia, Colorado and especially Nevada and New Hampshire/Vermont are much easier to be gentrified...and then there are not only states that are too big, but that no one wants to live in because their aren't any good white collar jobs. States like Alaska, Wyoming and Montana come to mind.
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Rockefeller GOP
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« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2014, 01:46:18 AM »

Sounds like the theory they try to refute has as much evidence as theirs.

Or at least- it depends. It probably works on smaller and mid sized states that weren't R+10 but maybe R+5. For example, Texas is very big and conservative, it would be very challenging to take it. States like Virginia, Colorado and especially Nevada and New Hampshire/Vermont are much easier to be gentrified...and then there are not only states that are too big, but that no one wants to live in because their aren't any good white collar jobs. States like Alaska, Wyoming and Montana come to mind.

Honestly, my main problem with 538 is they clearly have an image of what the Democratic Party could/will be, and they're okay with presenting that as a present reality because that's what they want to be true.  Souhtern states can "become" (in their eyes) competitive if "affluent" and liberal people move there ... ignoring that the wealthy, by and large, vote Republican (regardless of state).  And it's not that Milwaukee's well-educated and wealthy suburbs vote Republican because of the aforementioned traits, it's because they're inexplicably "conservative."  They're brilliant statisticians, but it's painfully obvious that they have a view of the Democratic Party that's a lot more elitist than a party like that could ever be.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2014, 07:17:08 PM »

The thing this analysis ignores is allure of particular metro areas within a state or region having much different political views than the rest of their respective states. 538 casually dismisses the Research Triangle as an exception to the effect they're discussing, but the Research Triangle is one of the best examples of where migration is changing the state's politics. Sure liberals aren't going to be flocking to the Appalachian part of Southwest Virginia any time soon, but they're moving to NOVA regardless of whether Virginia was traditionally conservative state or not. NOVA is culturally different than most of Virginia. The same applies to almost all of the former swing states drifting leftward allegedly from migration.
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eric82oslo
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« Reply #5 on: August 30, 2014, 07:50:08 PM »

The thing this analysis ignores is allure of particular metro areas within a state or region having much different political views than the rest of their respective states. 538 casually dismisses the Research Triangle as an exception to the effect they're discussing, but the Research Triangle is one of the best examples of where migration is changing the state's politics. Sure liberals aren't going to be flocking to the Appalachian part of Southwest Virginia any time soon, but they're moving to NOVA regardless of whether Virginia was traditionally conservative state or not. NOVA is culturally different than most of Virginia. The same applies to almost all of the former swing states drifting leftward allegedly from migration.

I applaud you. I agree. Very well-written. Smiley
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #6 on: August 30, 2014, 09:02:08 PM »

The thing this analysis ignores is allure of particular metro areas within a state or region having much different political views than the rest of their respective states. 538 casually dismisses the Research Triangle as an exception to the effect they're discussing, but the Research Triangle is one of the best examples of where migration is changing the state's politics. Sure liberals aren't going to be flocking to the Appalachian part of Southwest Virginia any time soon, but they're moving to NOVA regardless of whether Virginia was traditionally conservative state or not. NOVA is culturally different than most of Virginia. The same applies to almost all of the former swing states drifting leftward allegedly from migration.

This is very true, and it's why the growth of a city like Raleigh is making NC more Democratic, while the growth of Houston and Dallas haven't made Texas more Democratic.
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sg0508
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« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2014, 06:41:16 PM »

I don't think you can say that from a national standpoint concerning the state of FL.  The Democrats should be far more competitive than they are in Arizona, but the statewide Democratic Party (as in FL) is not good compared to the statewide GOP.

Most people associate the "Sunbelt" movement to FL, AZ and to some extent, TX.
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RI
realisticidealist
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« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2014, 08:36:29 PM »

Their evidence is really flimsy. Their dataset really can't answer the question they posed.
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GaussLaw
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« Reply #9 on: August 31, 2014, 09:53:26 PM »

Sounds like the theory they try to refute has as much evidence as theirs.

Or at least- it depends. It probably works on smaller and mid sized states that weren't R+10 but maybe R+5. For example, Texas is very big and conservative, it would be very challenging to take it. States like Virginia, Colorado and especially Nevada and New Hampshire/Vermont are much easier to be gentrified...and then there are not only states that are too big, but that no one wants to live in because their aren't any good white collar jobs. States like Alaska, Wyoming and Montana come to mind.

Honestly, my main problem with 538 is they clearly have an image of what the Democratic Party could/will be, and they're okay with presenting that as a present reality because that's what they want to be true.  Souhtern states can "become" (in their eyes) competitive if "affluent" and liberal people move there ... ignoring that the wealthy, by and large, vote Republican (regardless of state).  And it's not that Milwaukee's well-educated and wealthy suburbs vote Republican because of the aforementioned traits, it's because they're inexplicably "conservative."  They're brilliant statisticians, but it's painfully obvious that they have a view of the Democratic Party that's a lot more elitist than a party like that could ever be.

Yeah, but 538's way better than Atlas about it.  A bunch of Atlasians have basically posted stuff to the effect that the GOP is the party of Appalachian yokels while the Dems are the party of the educated, women, minorities, gays, and pretty much everything representing "tolerance" and "progress." 

Keep in mind that for every NoVA and Research Triangle, you also have a Douglas County, Colorado or Colin County, Texas, two very well-educated suburban areas.
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DS0816
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« Reply #10 on: September 02, 2014, 08:00:24 PM »
« Edited: September 03, 2014, 07:14:27 PM by DS0816 »

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The Democrats controlled the House for 26 years of the Republican presidential realigning period of 1968 to 2004. The Democrats also had majority control of the U.S. Senate for, estimated, 23 or 24 years during that Republican presidential realigning period of 1968 to 2004. And the note on governor mansions isn't compelling given the majority of states hold their elections in midterm congressional years (in which, for most cases, the opposition White House party prevails), as well as some odd-numbered years.

"Migration Isn't Turning Red States Blue" was not terribly compelling. Harry Entin and Nate Silver could have saved themselves time and just write about how we're not seeing prevailing presidential candidates carry four of every five states on average like they did, so many times, prior to the 1990s.
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pbrower2a
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« Reply #11 on: September 05, 2014, 08:19:13 AM »

The thing this analysis ignores is allure of particular metro areas within a state or region having much different political views than the rest of their respective states. 538 casually dismisses the Research Triangle as an exception to the effect they're discussing, but the Research Triangle is one of the best examples of where migration is changing the state's politics. Sure liberals aren't going to be flocking to the Appalachian part of Southwest Virginia any time soon, but they're moving to NOVA regardless of whether Virginia was traditionally conservative state or not. NOVA is culturally different than most of Virginia. The same applies to almost all of the former swing states drifting leftward allegedly from migration.

This is very true, and it's why the growth of a city like Raleigh is making NC more Democratic, while the growth of Houston and Dallas haven't made Texas more Democratic.

Texas has some of the most R cities with populations over 100K in America -- Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, and Wichita Falls. Odessa is just under 100K according to the 2010 Census and is growing fast. Oil and ranch interests give those cities very rural politics. Fort Worth is likely D, but not enough to make Tarrant County D as well.

El Paso, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio are D, but not enough to swing the state on a whole. It is worth remembering that suburbs of  the giant Texas cities are generally new enough to still have rural characteristics that keep them rather conservative. In contrast to the older suburbs of cities like Chicago and Philadelphia, Texas (see also Arizona and Georgia) suburbs generally don't have the aging suburbs that force Big Government upon local politics and don't have the large numbers of suburban-raised kids who are more urban than rural in their cultural values. Suburbs of Chicago and Philadelphia used to be more conservative than the US as a whole -- and that is over.

As for Virginia and North Carolina one must remember that those states have large black populations who create a large base for Democratic politics. The Republican Party now has little to offer middle-class and middle-income working-class, let alone poor, blacks anywhere in America. Virginia is becoming demographically and politically more like Maryland than like any other 'southern' states except for Florida.
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