If you were an American citizen who was either a registered Democrat or simply a left-leaning individual, and you wanted to move to a red state with the idea of effecting change, which state would you choose?
I realize this is a fool’s errand as you’d need to upscale this to the point of a great migration, but please humor me.
[ol]
[li]Can you find work in your field in that state?[/li][li]Is there something attractive about the state, political climate aside?[/li][li]Do you have family/friends there?[/li][li]Is the cost of living less than where you live now?[/li][li]Would it mean giving up access to the kinds of things you like about your current location (local theatre, music, great scene of some kind?[/li][/ol]
About ten years ago, there was a plan by a libertarian group to move en masse to New Hampshire and then to turn the state into a libertarian paradise. So I think you’d similarly want to find a small enough state that a small number of like-minded migrants could change the political landscape of the state.
I’d think you’d be much more effective moving to a purple or nearly purple state and working to tip it bluer. Virginia or N. Carolina come immediately to mind.
I personally have family (on my wife’s side) in Virgina and friends in N. Carolina, both have reasonable urban centers for that sort of thing and the weather is nice enough. I have no interest in leaving the Chicago area but if I was to be a political evangelist, I could think of worst places to go.
Go to a website like Dave Leip’s Election Atlas, click on the state results table for the 2012 election, and click on the sorting options. You can sort the state results by, among other things, margin of victory (D-R) and percentage margin of victory. That should give you a starting point.
Indiana, North Carolina, Montana, and Arizona are good places for Democrats to move to turn blue IMO. Also Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to defend from Republican encroachment.
If it had to be done, I would say to Democrats to move to Texas. Romney got only 1.4 million more votes than Obama in the last election. That’s like a third of the entire registered voter population in Los Angeles County. California voted for Obama by 3 million people. So split that difference, move to Texas and turn it blue and the GOP will never win another presidency again
If the Presidential elections are your major concern, consider moving to New Hampshire or Nevada. Either of these states could become a key swing state in a very close election, and voters have more electoral clout in small states. New Hampshire voters have 70% more electoral votes each than Florida voters do.
Many of the obvious swing states – Florida, Ohio, Virginia, etc. – suffer from gerrymandering so your vote for Congressional Representative would be worthless there. Also, immediately after Scalia,Thomas et al overturned the Voting Rights Act, North Carolina rushed to impose voting difficulties on the lower class, and doubtless other GOP states will follow. Best, I think, is to give up on the Confederacy, and keep control in the hands of the rational by retaining sanity in the West, North, and North Midwest.
The thing is, there really isn’t any state that had a true Libertarian presence before they started taking over NH, so it made sense they had to congregate somewhere to be heard.
It seems kind of silly for Dems to move when liberals are already well represented in places like CA, NY, Chicago, Detroit, etc. You already have your big chance to show the world how well liberal policies work in those places.
Two years ago I found myself moving from 50-50 Ohio to ruby Red South Carolina, home of the insane and uncompromising.
Still, I find it’s less red that I’d anticipated. The moves from PA, MI, OH and other northern states to here is changing things a bit. It’s small as yet but the state is beginning - at least on the local level - moving more purple each cycle.
The locals recognize this, too. There’s a strong ‘foreigners go home’ mentality and bumper stickers have popped up with a ‘Born Here!’ mentality. Heck, even the local minor league baseball team has a “Go Back to Ohio” promotion each year.
We won’t be bright blue for some time, but maps showing more than electoral votes reveal some purple–and blue urban areas. Those “immigrants” Cruz fears aren’t just from other countries. And there are plenty of us natives & near natives who have been lifelong Democrats & find the local Republicans increasingly repellent.
It’s hotter than Hell in the summer but everything is air conditioned–and our winters are relatively mild. Our cities offer jobs & culture (high & low).
Some time ago, I started a thread along these lines, proposing a progressive migration to Mississippi. I have since decided that Florida would be a better pick.
I moved from bright blue Oregon to Texas in the slim hopes that maybe I could help turn Texas blue. We just need a few more million people from deep blue states like CA, NY and IL to take the plunge. Then, never again will we suffer a republican president, at the very least.
Five years ago, after moving from Ohio to the burbs of Charlotte, NC (we lived in SC), I landed a job for which I was hired in a large group of slightly more than a dozen people. Two others in my hiring group were from Ohio. I thought that was weird until, over the course of the next four years, I met multitudes of others who had relocated from Ohio to North and South Carolina. I used to think it was confirmation bias, but now I think there’s something of a reverse Great Migration of Buckeyes going on. What’s up with that?
Back on topic: having lived in two solidly blue states, one swing state, and one solidly red state in the past and now living in a particularly reddish district of a solidly blue state, I can’t imagine going back to a red state. I never felt less enthusiastic about casting my vote than I did in various churches in South Carolina.
Glad to hear that South Cackalackie is changing. I was envisioning moving either to Texas (in part because of what I hear about Austin) or to North Carolina, but I may never move out of Pennsyltucky.
