I wonder what the 2020 census will look like when it comes time to reapportion the nation’s congressional districts? It’s a question which will likely be impacted by new data released by United Van Lines. They keep track of how many people are relocating to and from the various states and one trend which we’ve been seeing for a number of years now has continued in 2017. As the Free Beacon reports, some of the states with the most people packing up and heading for greener pastures seem to be the ones 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.”

So… Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Why do those names sound so familiar? Perhaps because 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. I’m not sure how Taxachusetts managed to stay off the top ten on that list, but they weren’t much further down.

Of course, that doesn’t explain all of the list. The rest of the states rounding out the places where people are in the biggest hurry to leave are Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Utah, and Wisconsin. None of them are in the group with the highest tax burden. So where are people moving to? The ones with most new residents are Vermont, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington, South Carolina, North Carolina, Colorado, and Alabama.

Vermont is something of a shock because they actually have the third highest tax burden. Alabama is the only state on that list which falls in the ten lowest tax burden states, coming in at 43. But one of the other driving factors is obviously opportunity. The Dakotas are experiencing a surge in energy exploration jobs, as well as being right to work states. The Carolinas, Idaho, Nevada and Alabama are on that list as well. The explanation for why so many people are going to Washington and Oregon may simply be folks with faulty GPS systems in their vehicles.

Getting back to the census question, 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.