By Tim Henderson, Stateline.org
Recently, millions of individuals in the United States have relocated from Democratic cities to Republican suburbs, creating challenges for swing states during a crucial election year, as per a study by Stateline.
Republican suburban counties in four swing states — Georgia in the South and Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the Midwest — gained the most new arrivals; heavily Democratic cities lost the most. In Western swing states Arizona and Nevada, the most appealing areas have been slightly Democratic cities that are anticipated to be highly contested.
These changes mirror a nationwide pattern: In counties that voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election, 3.7 million more people have moved in than have departed, while Democratic counties experienced a net loss of 3.7 million, based on a Stateline study of U.S. Census Bureau estimates and county presidential election data maintained by the University of Michigan.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates unveiled in March encompassed individuals who relocated within the country between mid-2020 and mid-2023, a period marked by pandemic disruptions, lockdowns in major cities, and the growth of remote work, which prompted a quest for affordable housing in less populated and more picturesque locales. It turns out that these locales also tend to be more conservative. The census figures exclude births and immigration.
It remains uncertain whether the new arrivals will vote Democratic this year, or if they were dissatisfied with Democratic policies in their previous residences and will opt for the Republican vote. These changes are likely to have the greatest impact on local and congressional races, but even a small number of movers crossing state lines could influence presidential vote tallies in swing states.
“We are anticipating an election that could be affected by the migration of small groups of people in each of these states, where a few thousand votes in any one state could impact the electoral vote there,” said David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University in Minnesota, who has edited and contributed to multiple books on presidential swing states.
The counties that attracted the most newcomers in Georgia (Forsyth County), Michigan (Ottawa County), Pennsylvania (Cumberland County), and Wisconsin (Waukesha County) were staunchly in favor of then-President Donald Trump in 2020. However, in the three Midwest counties, Joe Biden achieved the best performance for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Politics in a transforming county
In certain expanding counties, there has been friction as new residents bring their own expectations.
“People continue to relocate here due to their fondness for the area, but then attempt to transform it into the place they departed from,” stated David Avant, who operates a business networking website in Forsyth County, Georgia. According to the Stateline analysis, around 17,000 new individuals arrived in his county between mid-2020 and mid-2023.
The political landscape may not have shifted in some of the red counties examined. In Michigan, Doug Zylstra became the first Democrat elected to the 11-member Ottawa County Board of Commissioners in almost 50 years in 2018 and was reelected in 2022, but in 2023, a new majority assumed control, resulting in a more conservative direction for the commission.
Sylvia Rhodea, a new Republican on the commission, said that the people of Ottawa County elected them to replace the previous Republican-majority board, which supported Democratic ideology and practices.
During a meeting in January 2023, Rhodea criticized the previous board’s diversity, equity and inclusion program, saying it considered the county's 90% white and largely conservative population problematic for businesses, and sought to replace the American value of equality with the Marxist value of equity.
Rhodea stated in the meeting that there is not a racial divide in Ottawa County, but an ideological one. She emphasized that the welcoming of people will continue, but the divisive ideology needs to end.
The Rev. James Ellis III, a Black resident who moved to Ottawa County in April 2023, lives in the area that elected the county’s sole Democrat. He expressed his disagreement with the “racial divide” remark, deeming it inaccurate and unhelpful. He also mentioned the difficulty people on every side have in listening to each other.
Ellis, who grew up in Maryland and has lived in cities like Washington, D.C., and British Columbia, Canada, attended a local seminar