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Dante Chinni writesPolitics Countsas a regular Capital Journal feature. Mr. Chinni is the director of theAmerican Communities Project at American University, which examines different types of communities across the U.S.

The American electorate is not a stationary thing voters move. And data suggest that as people move, the countrys fastest growing big counties are becoming more politically liberal, particularly in big metro areas in important swing states such as Colorado and North Carolina.

The political impacts of moving populations can be difficult to measure, but they are a hidden force that can remake the electoral map.

So, to better understand those impacts, Politics Counts used survey data fromExperian Marketing Servicesthat shows the ideological makeup of movers compared with the rest of the population for every county in the U.S. whether the movers self-identify as liberal, conservative or middle-of-the-road. We then compared those data to a list of the fastest growing counties in the country of 100,000 people or more from the U.S. Census.

(While this data does not explicitly allow us to measure only movers to new a county, by matching the Experian mover data with data on the fastest-growing big counties, Politics Counts and Experian believe we can create a reasonably reliable metric for seeing how new movers to a county are changing its political leanings.)

The results indicate big counties across the country, particularly in states such as Colorado, North Carolina and Texas, are seeing more liberals moving in. The one big electoral bright spot for conservatives looks to be Florida.

Fastest-Growing Counties

Full screen version of map

These accompanying maps let you explore the changes. (Click to zoom and mouse over the counties.) Shading indicates when the movers in a county are more liberal, conservative or middle of the road, than the existing population using Experians indexes higher numbers and darker shading show more change. Counties can have low percentages of liberals or conservatives but still high index scores because the movers are more liberal or conservative than the current population.

Counties Trending Liberal

Go here to see the original:
Politics Counts: Where Liberals and Conservatives Are Moving