Well, this should shock precisely zero conservatives. United Van Lines has been keeping a record of their clients — so they know exactly how many people are relocating between various states. A not-so-shocking trend has emerged. As the Free Beacon reports, people are leaving states with the highest taxes:

Illinois, New Jersey, and New York were the top states in the nation for outbound moves in 2017, according to data from United Van Lines. United Van Lines, which tracks state-to-state migration patterns, found that Illinois was the top state for outbound migration with 63 percent of moves going out of state. “The Northeast continues to experience a moving deficit with New Jersey (63 percent outbound), New York (61 percent) and Connecticut (57 percent) making the list of top outbound states for the third consecutive year,” the report states. “Massachusetts (56 percent) also joined the top outbound list this year.”

As Jazz Shaw on HotAir reported, there is a pattern to these specific states. In fact, they have something in common. “… The states with the highest tax burdens include the following: New York is number 1, Connecticut is number 6, New Jersey is number 7 and Illinois is number 9.”

As a Californian, I totally understand this migration. There’s something really infuriating about forking over taxes to a state that spends so frivolously.

Shaw maintains that this might have a negative impact on Democratic representation in the House:

New York has been bleeding off residents for a long time now and consistently losing seats in Congress. Looking at these numbers, that may happen again after 2020. It’s also no mystery that the rest of the high tax states tend to be the blue ones. There may be some regional demographic changes which favor the Democrats, but overall, their representation in the House may wind up shrinking because they continue to tax their residents to the point of exhaustion and evacuation.

One can only hope that Democrat politicians suffer real-world consequences to their onerous tax policies.

Image Credit: PRO Phil’s 1stPix on Flickr

Hat Tip: HotAir