Perspective
Red Counties + Blue Folks = Purple? Reading the New Census Data
The newly released Census data shows that people are moving with greater frequency from Clinton-voting counties to Trump-voting counties than the other way around, but the Republican party shouldn’t be so quick to celebrate.
The charts in this article were produced by the Indeed Hiring Lab where the author, Jed Kolko, works as chief economist.
The 2017 Census local population estimates, released this morning, show that Americans are moving from blue counties to red counties, and at a quickening pace. The flow of people from blue to red counties has picked up in recent years, steadily increasing since 2012, and the exodus is greatest in dark-blue counties—those where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by more than 20 percent. (Blue and red refer to whether Clinton or Trump got more votes in 2016; dark and light refer to whether the margin was at least 20 percentage points. Data on voting was not available for Alaska counties, which were omitted.)