Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Data on the Big Sort

Steven Hayward, posting at Power Line, has lists of states gaining and losing population in the last fiscal year. As you might imagine Democrat-run blue states are losers and Republican-run red states are gainers. The data are confounded to some extent because they reflect absolute numbers and obviously tend to be dominated by large states.

Therefore Steve’s PL colleague John Hinderaker, who in retirement heads a think tank, had a statistician rank states by per capita loss or gain which produces a somewhat different list, also shown. It is difficult to argue with the results of Americans “voting with their feet,” moving where government policies are more to their liking. And of course, the growth in working from home gives such moves a boost.