More than 25 million U.S. adults move to new markets every year. With the presidential election less than a week away, CENSAI dove deep into migration data to understand how movers make an impact on election turnout in precincts across America.
CENSAI data offers insights into more than 270 million voters, which account for nearly every mover who is 18 years and older. In addition to demographics such as income, education, and age, we also have data on the politics of where people are moving to and from.
For this article, we analyzed population inflows over the last four years by mapping each mover to one of the over 175,000 political precincts across the country. Our analysis shows how vote margins may change on Election Day 2024.
Analysis of voter population inflows
Let’s look at highlights on both sides of the political aisle. Since the last election, Oklahoma received an estimated 15,475 more incoming Republican votes than Democratic votes. This margin is higher than any other state, suggesting that the Republican Party could potentially pick up the most votes from people moving into Oklahoma.
We calculated this by summing up the probability that each mover will vote for either party. If the individual came from a precinct that voted 70% for Trump and 30% for Biden in 2020, we inputted values of 0.7 Republican votes and 0.3 Democratic votes for this voter. Performing this calculation across four years for every state yielded the total potential change in each state’s voting patterns.
In contrast, the four biggest states — California, New York, Texas, and Florida — are estimated to net more Democratic votes than GOP votes. California and New York are strongholds for the Democratic Party, but what will happen in red states such as Florida and Texas? Having the biggest margins does not always translate to moving the needle. Even with the greater number of likely Democrats moving into these states, we don’t anticipate seeing voting trends change much.
The Northeast and Pacific West continue to see voters coming from blue states. Meanwhile, voters from conservative areas are moving to other red states.
Voter population trends are making an impact in battlegrounds such as Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Based on our population inflow analysis, these states are looking bluer than they did four years ago.
The predictive power of migration data
Migration trends play a major role in forecasting election turnouts. They also provide extreme value to industries such as real estate and professional financial services. With our population intelligence solutions, CENSAI customers have the ability to predict investment opportunities in markets all across America.
Try CENSAI for free to explore the industry’s most precise population and migration data.
Notes about this analysis:
- Our analysis was based on population inflows going back to January 2021.
- We also used data from the 2020 presidential election to determine the potential partisan makeup of movers.
- For the purpose of this analysis, we assumed that everyone moving across state lines is voting even though that will not be the case.
- We did not figure outflows into our analysis.
- Population inflow estimates do not include everyone who moved into a state, as sometimes precinct data for incoming voters is unavailable.
