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Source: U.S. Census Bureau

In his new book, The Big Sort, Austin-based journalist Bill Bishop suggests that the increasing political divide among Americans is not just figurative but literal. As the economy becomes more diversified, Bishop argues, and fewer economic sectors are tied to particular geographic locales, Americans can choose their place of residence for ideological reasons rather than economic ones. They are increasingly likely, Bishop discovered, to choose to live in places where their neighbors share their opinions about politics.

As Andrew Gelman of Columbia University and I discovered recently, there is a direct relationship between increasing self-sorting and increasing polarization, particularly in Congress. Fewer congressional districts are competitive, because Republicans can vacate Democratic-leaning districts to flee for Republican ones, and Democrats stuck in Mobile or Helena can migrate to bluer pastures. Thus the congresspeople elected in these districts can tend safely toward extreme points of view rather than having to mollify a diverse constituency.

Although Bishop's hypothesis about sorting is primarily concerned with migration at the local level among different neighborhoods within a particular city and among different cities within a particular metropolitan area it is worth asking whether these patterns are also manifesting themselves at the state level. Within the past couple of years, of course, the country has undergone a somewhat dramatic shift toward the Democratic party. An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in April put the percentage of self-identified Republicans at just 21 percent nationwide, the lowest that number has been since 1983. Are blue states therefore gaining population and red states losing it?

The short answer is no. According to estimates by the Census Bureau, the nineteen states that voted for John Kerry in 2004, along with the District of Columbia, gained a total of 822,440 people between 2007 and 2008. But the thirty-one states that voted for George W. Bush — which had roughly the same number of people to start the year — gained almost two million. Perhaps the more interesting metric, however, is the migration of persons within the United States, ignoring those who move here from abroad and natural changes in population because of births and deaths. Although red states are still gaining ground on blue states (as you can see in the above chart), their momentum appears to be slowing.

Georgia, for instance, which gained a net of nearly 99,000 people due to domestic migration in 2007, saw that number drop to below 57,000 last year. Florida, which four years ago saw a net of more than 250,000 relocate to it from within the United States, actually experienced a net outflow last year to other states. Meanwhile, California's net loss was cut nearly in half (from about 269,000 emigrants to other states to just over 144,000) and New York, which had lost almost 250,000 people to other states in 2005, saw that number halved to 126,209 in 2008. Overall, the attrition in blue states fell by nearly 30 percent last year, from a total 760,426 people in 2007 to 534,610 in 2008.

Not all the explanations for this have to involve politics. For instance, as the Census Bureau reported in April, just 11.6 percent of Americans aged fifteen and over changed their primary place of residence in 2008, marking the lowest rate the Census Bureau has ever recorded. Although mobility rates have been declining for some time (in part because of the graying of the population younger people move more than older people do), the stagnant economy and moribund housing market undoubtedly accentuated the trend. It also may be, however, that people leaving blue states for red states are finding they aren't as happy as they expected to be. Throughout 2008, Gallup surveyed American adults in all fifty states on their health, well-being, and life satisfaction; the project included more than 350,000 interviews in total. Gallup asked people, among other things, whether they were happy or unhappy with the cities where they lived.

Source: Gallup

The good news is that most Americans about 85 percent are happy with their place of residence. (See map, above.) But the perplexing news is that there isn't any particularly strong correlation between a state's population growth and its happiness levels. The states growing at the fastest rates due to domestic migration since the 2000 census have been Nevada and Arizona. Yet both states register slightly below-average satisfaction levels (83 percent and 84.4 percent, respectively). Conversely, people are very happy in blue Minnesota nearly 90 percent of its residents like it although it has generally been losing ground to other states. Even Hawaii, where 88.8 percent of people are happy, has had a net outflow of domestic migrants.

Nor do red states appear to be happier than blue states. In the former (states that voted for George W. Bush in 2004), on average, 85.3 percent of people reported that they were satisfied with their place of residence, versus an average of 85.6 percent in blue states (those that voted for Kerry). As this is the first year that Gallup has conducted this survey, we can't compare these numbers against past trends. But from an economist's point of view, the data are suggestive, since it would be unusual to expect people to continue moving to states where they find themselves no happier than the ones they left.

Either way whether migration patterns are changing because of self-sorting or the slowed-down economy this has the potential to help Democrats in 2010 when electoral votes and congressional seats are reallocated based on the new census. Blue states, as long expected, will still lose electoral votes to red states in 2010, reflecting the gradual shift of the population southward and westward. But the bleeding could be significantly less than many experts thought it would be. Arizona, for example, which appeared nearly certain to gain two electoral votes, may now gain only one; the same holds for Florida. Texas, which seemed safely on track to gain four electoral votes, may now add just three. Conversely, Pennsylvania and New York, which looked bound to lose two electoral votes each, will probably now drop by just one. Illinois and Minnesota, with some luck, may avoid losing seats at all; Oregon and Washington may each gain one. The only bad news for Democrats is in Michigan, which has been hemorrhaging population at an extremely high rate because of its double-digit unemployment levels, and which might drop from seventeen electoral votes to fifteen if its economy does not show some improvement.

It may be that in tough economic times, people no longer have the luxury to move for reasons as whimsical as political ideology, instead sticking with states that do a better job of taking care of them. The most profound difference in the Gallup survey between blue states and red states was in the provision of health care: An average of 17.4 percent of people in red states reported that they were without health insurance versus 11.5 percent in blue states. Blue-state residents were also considerably more likely to have visited a doctor and a dentist. If red-state governors like Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas make good on their threats to turn down economic stimulus money, making it harder for people to get back on their feet, they may find that they soon have fewer constituents to govern — and that they have cost the Republicans electoral votes come 2012.

It may be, indeed, that in accordance with Bishop's hypothesis, people's geographic preferences are changing along with their political ones — they are literally voting with their feet.

runs the political Web siteFiveThirtyEight.com and is an analyst and writer for Baseball Prospectus.

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