Thousands more Americans are leaving blue states for red states than moving in the opposite direction, according to a new analysis by professional movers’ marketplace MovingPlace. Republican-leaning states, so identified based on how they voted in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, saw the biggest gains out of the 1,559,739 interstate moves recorded by PGM between January and August. In total, red states reported 707,681 arrivals against 605,071 departures, or +0.78 net moves per 1,000 residents, for a net gain of 102,610.
Two states alone were responsible for the majority of these gains: Florida and Texas. The two states—both in the South, both considered generally affordable and with friendly tax environments—reported the most interstate gains, with 34,396 and 21,023 respectively, the equivalent of 54 percent of all Republican-leaning states’ net gain. Democratic-leaning states, by comparison, reported 498,751 interstate arrivals against 624,577 departures in the same period, or four arrivals for every five departures, for a net loss of 125,826.
The biggest losses were reported by California and New York, two expensive coastal states which have long been losing residents to more affordable cities near them or across state lines. With the addition of Illinois, the three states represented 64 percent of all losses in blue states. Competitive, or swing, states recorded a modest net gain of 25,178 moves.
What emerges from the data is not only that red states are winning the domestic migration race over blue states, but also that Republican-leaning states are gaining many more new residents from Democratic-leaning states than the other way round. The majority of moves reported between January and August occurred between states of different political faiths, so to say, while 38 percent took place within the same political group. The largest individual flow between groups was from Democratic-leaning to Republican-leaning states, with 252,166 moves, according to MovingPlace.
Moves from blue to red states outnumbered moves in the reverse direction by a net 86,626. Fifteen of the 24 Republican-leaning states identified by MovingPlace recorded a net gain in moves, while only nine saw more departures than arrivals. The biggest overall net migration gains—including by other red states or blue states—were reported by: Forty percent of Florida’s arrivals came from Democratic-leaning states, compared with 31 percent from other Republican-leaning states, and 42 percent of Texas’s arrivals came from blue states compared to 39 percent from red states.
Tennessee is the main exception in this list, with 45 percent of new arrivals coming from other Republican-leaning states. On a per-capita basis, Idaho recorded the strongest per-capita gain among Republican-leaning states, at 4.37 net moves per 1,000 residents, followed by South Carolina at 3.69 and Montana at 2.54. South Dakota and Tennessee also posted gains of more than 1.7 net moves per 1,000 residents.
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