This was a phenomenon in USA I heard about two years ago - That an increasing number of people who votes or sympathizes with Democrat are moving from states where there are a republican stronghold
Is this new trend a fact ?
While I can’t account for every single person and subgroup in the U.S. and their reasons for moving, the larger trend is exactly the opposite. The big moves are from the Northeast and North into the South and Southwest. Some of the most heavily Democratic states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island are now losing population at the fastest rate in the nation.
Here is newer color map for you. Other than the very Democratic Jones family that packed up from Texas and moved to New York, everyone else seems to be heading the opposite way.
I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but I when I moved from Texas to Oregon, I counted as one of the benefits the fact that finally my vote would actually matter. It irritated me, during the 2000 election, that a Texas vote for anyone other than Bush was just a waste of time.
Isn’t that backwards? If you vote for the person that’s going to win anyway, aren’t you just throwing your vote away? You vote matters more when you’re going against the tide.
There has been a trend recently noticed here in Virginia-- the knuckle-dragging Republicans in the state legislature have turned so hostile to LGBT people that some of us have started leaving the state.
Believe me, every time I read the news from Richmond, I have to ask myself “Why do I still stay in this backwards place?” Or maybe the question should be “Why does Northern Virginia have to stay in this state?” The last time Virginia fucked up bad, a big chunk in the northwest broke away and became another state. It can happen again. Northern Virginia supplies most of Richmond’s revenue, and what do we get in return? Fundie homophobic legislation and not enough roads?
My Northern Virginian homie Mama Zappa said her her neighbors moved away already because of homophobic legislation. There was a story in the Washington Post recently about LGBT people moving out of Virginia.
Meanwhile I’m staying and volunteering with Equality Virginia. I also wear my t-shirt with two brides saying “I do.”
Previous to the 2004 election, Al Franken and some other folks on Air America Radio were encouraging people to move to Ohio. There’s a short residency requirement there, and to register, you only need to claim you intend to stay. I have no information on how many people actually moved to Ohio to vote.
In the months after Hurricane Katrina drove a horde of people out of New Orleans, a great many of those “tempest-tos’t” people decided to stay in Houston, Nashville, and other cities. There was speculation that this tide of blue-staters could sway the next election.
Lovely: election fraud. :rolleyes:
Yes, and having a West Virginia is working out just swimmingly for the queers, isn’t it.
Except that New Orlanes denizens are red-staters, not blue-staters. New Orleans as a city may vote Democrat, but of course other folks from surrounding suburban and rural areas (that presumably lean Republican) also had to flee for their lives; not all the refugees came from New Orleans proper.
Huh?
Those from New Orleans who voted blue should feel right at home in Nashville. We are also a blue city in a red state.
Not really. Since most states use a winner-take-all system for their electoral votes, the voters with the most clout live in the swing states - those states where the vote is expected to be close.
As for people moving from one state to another to affect the outcome of elections, it might work for a state where the vote was really close (e.g. Florida in 2000). The vote usually isn’t so close, though. I think in most cases it would be hard to find enough people committed enough to a political party to move for the purpose of influencing an election.
How about a Republican who switches parties to stand a better chance of winning? Depending on the State and the strength of the incumbent, this does happen. In some areas it is quite common. (Isn’t this effectively the same thing as moving from state to state just to win an election?)
Just making mention of this political technique,
- Jinx
Well, Yankees from red states keep moving to Texas (the quintessential blue state) each year, so we must be bucking the trend.
And we certainly aren’t the only Republican state that’s seeing increasing numbers of Democratic immigrants. A generation ago, New Hampshire was pretty solidly Repoublican, but today, so many Democrats from Massachusetts have moved there, it’s a tossup.
People move from one state to another for all kinds of reasons, and that can have some political ramifications. But very, very few people move from conservative states to liberal states (or vice versa) for purely political reasons. Most of the time, people move for personal or economic reasons. If they happen to bring their politics with them, well, that’s a secondary result.
Sigh… I never can keep my colors straight!
Good move, Johanna! The best way to make your vote count is to do the political work necessary to support it.
My wife and I live in Illinois, which will always go heavily Democratic with the (moderately) liberal Chicago area overwhelming the consevatives down-state, but we’re planning to move to Wisconsin, which is always on the cusp, before November 2008. Once we’re there, we plan to be ACTIVE!
There’s nothing fraudulent about moving and voting in your new state. Everyone has a right to vote wherever she lives.
One can always vote for any candidate in the general election regardless of party affiliation. A Democrat doesn’t have to re-register as a Republican to vote for the Republican candidate, for example. People who vote across party lines in the general election are just voting for the candidates they like best.
On the other hand, someone who moves from a non-swing state to a swing state for the general election is increasing the power of his vote. If only a few hundred Democrats had moved from New York (say) to vote in Florida in 2000, the election would likely have swung to Gore. The same votes cast in New York would have no influence on the outcome of the election, since New York was solidly Democratic.
One can switch parties for a primary election to try to influence which candidate a party chooses for the general election. For instance, in a state with closed primaries a Democrat could re-register as a Republican to vote for whom he thinks is the weakest Republican candidate. This strategy is closer to what Jinx suggested, except that it can only affect who gets nominated (not who wins the general election). Also, it wouldn’t have much chance of influencing the nomination unless the state had a winner-take-all primary and there was a close race.
Well, yeah, except you said:
That’s the potentially fraudulent part. You state without having any intention to stay that you intend to stay just to vote. You know, “Wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Of course I intend to stay.”
That’s probably not what you meant, but when you mention Al Franken, Air America Radio, and “only need to claim” all in the same paragraph, it’s not so terribly difficult to read between the lines.