Will Franklin of WILLisms put up an interesting link on his Twitter feed: A PDF of Texas relocation data from the Texas Association of Realtors.
There’s lots of interesting information to be gleaned:
The 2014 Texas Relocation Report shows that Texas continues to be a national leader in relocation activity and a sought- after location for households moving out of state.
According to the report, Texas gained more out-of-state residents than any other state in 2013, with 584,034 people moving to Texas from out of state. A majority of these residents originated from California (66,318), followed by Florida (32,619), Oklahoma (29,169), Louisiana (29,042), and Illinois (28,900).
Texas ranked third in the nation for number of residents moving out of state in 2013 (409,977), coming in behind California (581,689) and Florida (423,995) and topping New York (401,440), and Illinois (304,674). Like with incoming residents, a majority of the residents who moved out of state moved to California (32,290), followed by Oklahoma (27,391), Florida (24,226), Colorado (23,490), and Louisiana (21,747).
Overall, Texas had a net gain of out-of-state residents in 2013, with 138,057 more people moving into Texas than Texas residents moving out of state in 2013.
So roughly twice as many people moved from California to Texas as vice versa.
Other nuggets from the report:
What does this mean politically? As Ace of Spades noted in their ginormous .PNG, conservative areas of the state are gaining population, while liberal strongholds are losing ground. The two largest liberal counties (Bexar and Travis) to gain population were outpaced by population growth in conservative Denton County alone.
Conclusion: Despite Democrats talking up demographic shifts, don’t expect Texas to turn blue anytime soon…
Tags: California, Dallas, Harris County, population, Travis County, Williamson County
But didn’t the same thing happen in Virginia? The exurbs of Norther Virginia (Loudoun, Prince William) used to be rock-ribbed conservative. Population boomed. Fast growing counties in America for a decade. Deep red counties growing faster than the blue counties.
But what happened was the population boom turned the exurbs blue. Obama won the Northern Virginia exurbs easily in 2012.
The comparison is inexact, because the north Virginia suburbs and exurbs are overwhelmingly populated by people who work for or benefit directly from Big Government. People are moving to Texas for private sector opportunities, so I wouldn’t expect anything like the same change in voting patterns.
Most nova employment is not govt. Huge IT sector.
Loudoun has 17% govt employees
Prince William has 24%.
I’d wager that the majority of those NoVa IT workers are working for “Beltway Bandits” and other private sector It firms that support or benefit directly from Big Government, or companies that support those firms.
You are making an assumption when you say the folks moving to Williamson are coming here for its conservatism. Infact, we moved here because we assume it will attract more Democrats due to its proximity to Austin coupled with Austin`s higher than average taxes and housing costs.
First, Democrats will take Williamson and then the state Texas. Watch and see.
So you’re coming to Williamson County because Austin’s taxes are too high, and yet don’t see any connection to conservatism? [Facepalm]
No, it wasn’t Obama-driven federal employment that turned VA blue. That’s a fallacy. More than half the entire state’s population — as early as 2008 — had moved to Virginia in the prior ten years. And they all came from NORTH of Virginia.
Liberals flee Democratic strongholds when the taxes get too high and the crime gets too bad. Then they continue to vote Democratic until the same thing happens in their new town. Rinse, repeat.