Who is Moving to Montana From California? This May Tell Us

We've known for a while now that a LOT of Californians are fleeing the state and coming to places like Montana. Who are these people? Are they trying to bring the mess with 'em? This data may give us some insight.

Monday morning this Fox News headline caught my eye- Thousands of blue state residents flock to Idaho, bringing conservative politics with them: data

The Seattle Times noted that real estate ads advise residents in states such as Washington to "escape liberal hell" and move to Idaho.

The Fox News piece highlighted data from the Idaho Secretary of State's office shows that the overwhelming majority of people fleeing California for Idaho are registering as Republicans.

We had this exact same conversation last week with Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow with the Claremont Institute who lives in Bozeman, Montana. He took an early look at the numbers showing that 75% of Californians moving into Idaho are registering as Republicans.

Jeremy Carl: The Idaho Secretary of State has published kind of party registration data for everybody who's moved to Idaho over the last sort of several years, and what it shows is, with a small exception of like a very small number of people leaving Vermont- every single state is sending basically Republicans to Idaho. And I would assume the same thing is going on in Montana.

Since voters in Montana do not register based on party affiliation, it is hard to know how many newcomers are registering as Republican or Democrat. However, both Carl and I agree that it is likely that most of the newcomers are Republicans who fled states like California based on some of the anecdotal evidence we have been seeing.

Here's our full chat with Jeremy Carl: