While this is generally true, that people don’t move solely because of the politics around them, another thing that is clearly true is that people OFTEN move because of the effects that politics have had on where they live. I suspect that the vast majority of moves are due to jobs, careers, or businesses. And another big chunk perhaps due to weather, especially for retirees.
It’s funny because I have a direct example of that literally right now, TODAY. I have a second cousin (well, distant relative of some sort, I can never remember what a second cousin is versus a once removed or twice removed or whatever) that lived in NY their entire life, their spouse lived in NY for 95% of their life and their 3 kids were born in NY (NY City) and spent their entire childhood (so far) there. This person runs some sort of online business, I’m not entirely sure exactly what, but they are all tired of the results of NYC politics. They’re tired of so many things in NYC - the high taxes (there’s some sort of new tax, either proposed or enacted, that will affect their business somehow, I have no idea about the details as I heard this all secondhand), the high costs of travel (they added some sort of new toll for entering the city recently that rankles them and others, plus all sorts of tolls to get pretty much anywhere*), and since the kids are either in high school or close to it, they are also afraid of random street violence and public transport violence when their kids are alone traveling.
Anyway, the kids are staying with their grandparents in NY (they have school this week) and the parents just arrived late last night here to FL to find a neighborhood/house to move to. They’ve had it with NYC. But really they’ve mostly had it with what the results of NYC politics have created. It’s funny because they’re the kind of people that apparently love city living, and love the ready access to nearly everything in walking distance, etc. If they ask me for advice, I will definitely mention that EVERYTHING here requires a car ride - even just picking up a stick of butter at the store. And for the most part, the kids need to be driven all over the place, to school each morning, from school each afternoon, to every afterschool activity, to many of their friends (though some will be walking distance), etc.
But there are tradeoffs with each type of living situation - city versus suburb, high-tax versus low-tax (usually people refer to income tax here, not other taxes), north versus south, etc. The grass isn’t always greener even though from a distance it might look greener.
* The last time I lived in NYC, in the late 80s, I lived on Staten Island, and the only way to get off/on the island with a car was to pay a hefty toll on one of the 4 bridges. Oddly enough, the ferry was free, or close to free at $0.25. Even back then, when I was in graduate school, I was paying very high amounts of tolls each day I had to travel to/from work (in NJ) and to/from school (in NYC). Luckily I was reimbursed for most of them from my company, but had I paid for them myself, it would have been very annoying.
