Friday, August 29, 2003

Voting with their feet

Daniel Henninger has a great piece in the Wall Street Journal today about how the “Blue” states (those that went for Gore) are experiencing negative migration while the “Red” states (for Bush) are growing.

According to a report out this month from the U.S. Census Bureau, an astounding 2,204,500 Californians threw in the towel from 1995 to 2000 and highballed it out of the "Golden State." The state's net migration figure for the period is minus-755,536, and would be worse if Latin American immigrants didn't still drop in for a look. This is the first time the net migration number for California has ever gone negative.
. . . . . . .
If you look down the Census Bureau's coming-and-going column nearby, the consistent breakdown of Democratic blue-state population losers and Republican red-state gainers is striking (there are exceptions; Oregon and Washington state gained, while Louisiana lost). This may leave the blue states bluer than ever, but not very pleasant places to live if their most industrious, motivated citizens are loading up one-way U-Hauls.

Of course, I’m an industrious citizen but my wife won’t let me move from blue Massachusetts; the nearest “red” state is New Hampshire and even that was a close contest.

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