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In this article, we examine the role that in-migration played in contributing to the 2008 Democratic presidential victory in North Carolina. Prior to Barack Obama, the last time the Tar Heel State was carried by a Democrat was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Since the late 1980s, North Carolina has undergone tremendous demographic change. In addition to a gr...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... the survey does not ask respondents where they were born, so we are unable to conceptualize in- migration as anything beyond not being a native-born North Carolinian. In addition to the migrant indicator, the survey also includes a measure of party affiliation (Democrat, Independent, and Republican) which serves as our dependent variable for the model presented in Table 3. Gender (1 = female, 0 = male); age (1 = 18-29 years, 2 = 30-45 years, 3= 46-65 years, and 4 = 60+ years); Black (1 = Black registrant, 0 = other registrants); and Other Minority (1 = other non-Black minority registrant, 0 = other registrants) serve as our control variables in the model designed to predict party affiliation among North Carolinians. ...
Context 2
... addition to the migrant indicator, the survey also includes a measure of party affiliation (Democrat, Independent, and Republican) which serves as our dependent variable for the model presented in Table 3. Gender (1 = female, 0 = male); age (1 = 18-29 years, 2 = 30-45 years, 3= 46-65 years, and 4 = 60+ years); Black (1 = Black registrant, 0 = other registrants); and Other Minority (1 = other non-Black minority registrant, 0 = other registrants) serve as our control variables in the model designed to predict party affiliation among North Carolinians. Because the dependent variable con- tains three unordered categories, we again use multinomial logistic regres- sion to estimate the model parameters presented in Table 3. 24 The results of our party registration model are found in Table 2. Equation 1 compares Democratic registrants with unaffiliated registrants. ...
Context 3
... second set of individual-level results pertaining to party affiliation among North Carolinians is detailed in Table 3. The multinomial logit model compares independents to Democrats, and independents to Republicans, respectively. ...
Context 4
... results presented in Table 3 are translated into a set of predicted prob- abilities, which are displayed in Figure 6. In terms of partisan self-identifica- tion among North Carolinians there is no difference in the probability of Republican identification between migrants (p = .41) ...
Context 5
... our dependent variable coded 1 for those respondents who indicated they would vote for the Democratic candidate Barack Obama and 0 for those respondents who preferred Republican John McCain or Libertarian Bob Barr. In addition to the same controls for race, gender, migrant status, and age, which are included in the partisan affiliation model (Table 3), we also include dichotomous measures for independent and Democratic identifiers. As with the preceding model, a second model is also specified which includes two interactive terms (Democrat × Migrant and Independent × Migrant) designed to test whether migrants who are independents or Democrats are more likely to vote for Obama compared with native North Carolinians who identify as independents or Democrats. ...
Context 6
... difference in prob- abilities, at .22, is statistically significant. It should be noted that these find- ings (and those from Table 3 as well) are a very conservative gauge of the effect of in-migration on North Carolina politics in 2008. The poll conducted by PPP includes native Southerners in their definition of migrant. ...
Citations
... A cursory glance at work in the area reveals some research on the impact of migration on turnout(Highton, 2000;Squire et al., 1987), the partisan leaning of individuals(Brown, 1988;MacDonald & Franko, 2008), as well as a studies of migration streams as a force for partisan change within regions and states(Bishop, 2009;Frendreis, 1989;Gimpel & Schuknecht, 2001;Hood & McKee, 2010;McDonald, 2011;Morris, 2021;Robinson & Noriega, 2010). ...
Prominent historical examples point to how population surges from elsewhere have
contributed to the social and political reconstitution of local electorates. Population
mobility internal to the United States varies over time and across states but has
always been impressive enough in volume to raise the curiosity of observers about
its political effects. Here we press the question of whether the well-documented
stream of migrants relocating from California to Texas has been sufficient to alter
the political complexion of the destination state. Including migrants from Florida
proves to be an illuminating contrast, showing that the California influx is indeed
large, but politically quite mixed. We find that the aggregate effect of this flow on
the partisan balance of Texas has been minimal in the short-term. Local effects on
the counties and smaller localities in Texas are more noticeable, however, as crossstate migrants are highly selective in their relocation decisions, gravitating toward destinations consonant with their political values.
... First, North Carolina has semi-closed primaries, meaning that people registered with a party can only vote in their party's primary, but unaffiliated voters can choose to vote in either primary. Some evidence suggests that these Unaffiliated voters may have been key to recent electoral success in North Carolina (Hood and McKee 2010). ...
Objective
We examine the size, characteristics, and attitudes of Unaffiliated party registrants as they compare to registrants from the two major parties.
Methods
We analyze voter registration files, voter history files, and public opinion data from North Carolina.
Results
Unaffiliated registrants are not simply shadow partisans but, on average, are distinct from two major parties in terms of demographics, political behavior, and political attitudes.
Conclusion
Voters who eschew party labels are best understood as unmoored voters—often hovering close to their ideological docks but with no institutional constraint to keep them from drifting as the political tides shift.
... Based on the theory that partisanship is a highly influential social identity (Green, Palmquist, and Schickler, 2002;Mason, 2018), because activists are more politically sophisticated than the mass public (Lupton, Myers, and Thornton, 2015), it follows that party switching is associated with demographic-based sorting. Additionally, in a region undergoing considerable political changes due in part to population growth via in-migration (e.g., Hood and McKee, 2010), this should be an important contributor to the increasing demographic differences between Democratic and Republican activists. Past research demonstrated that since the 1990s, southern in-migration disproportionally favors Democrats because nonnatives generally grow up in more Democratic settings (see Hood and McKee, 2010;Hillygus, McKee, and Young, 2017;McKee, 2019;McKee and Teigen, 2016). ...
... Additionally, in a region undergoing considerable political changes due in part to population growth via in-migration (e.g., Hood and McKee, 2010), this should be an important contributor to the increasing demographic differences between Democratic and Republican activists. Past research demonstrated that since the 1990s, southern in-migration disproportionally favors Democrats because nonnatives generally grow up in more Democratic settings (see Hood and McKee, 2010;Hillygus, McKee, and Young, 2017;McKee, 2019;McKee and Teigen, 2016). Hence, activists switching to the Democratic Party (R-to-D switchers) should be more likely than Democratic loyalists to have grown up outside the South), and our analysis provides the first look at this dynamic. ...
Objective
We examine the demographic profiles of southern county-level activists, who switched parties to see how they may differ from other activists affiliated with the party they converted to.
Methods
With data from the 1991–92 and 2001 Southern Grassroots Party Activists (SGPA) projects, we use descriptive and multivariate analysis to determine which demographic characteristics distinguish party-switching activists from non-switching activists.
Results
Across several important demographics, party-switching activists are significantly different from the non-switching activists of the party the former group converted to.
Conclusions
In an increasingly contentious political era, the conversion of activists into opposite parties is one avenue by which the demographic makeup of party coalitions may shift, as party-switching activists differ from activists who have never changed their affiliation. Converts can also bring different ideological and issue positions.
... Despite evidence that interstate migration in the United States affects the political context of destination states, particularly in the South (Bass and De Vries 1995;Frendreis 1989;Frey 2015;Hood and McKee 2010;Lublin 2004;McKee and Teigen 2016;Parker 1988;Scher 1997;Wolfinger and Hagen 1985), and considerable attention to the political effects of the recent dispersion of Latino migrants across the United States (cf. Frey 2015; Hatalsky and Kessler 2017;Massey 2008;Sanchez 2015), the limited amount of individual-level data on Latino migrants and their political preferences limits our understanding of the implications for Latino interstate migration. ...
... Observationally, this would equate to the expectation of the homophily hypothesis, with no discernable difference between domestic migrants and non-migrants in destination states. On the other hand, migrants may bring the politics and social preferences from their home state to their destination state (Frendreis 1989;Glaser and Gilens 1997;Hood and McKee 2010;Jurjevich and Plane 2012;Parker 1988;Rice and Pepper 1997;Robinson and Noriega 2010;Wals 2011;2013). Here, rather than assimilating to the new state's politics, domestic migrants' political dispositions vary by the political context of the state they left. ...
While popular narratives regarding the destiny of demographics assume Latino interstate migrants will alter destination state politics as Latinos disperse across the states, no studies directly assess the empirical validity of the underlying assumption of migrant's political preferences. Moreover, established theories of domestic migrant preferences suggest a variety of potential individual-level behaviors that often diverge from the underlying assumption of a uniform introduction of more liberal voters. Employing data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, this study presents an analysis on Latino interstate migrant voting behavior, while also overcoming a variety of data limitations in existing studies. Countering some previous findings that homophily, adaptation, or even a static liberal orientation describes migrant voting behavior, the results suggest that Latino interstate migrant preferences vary by the political context of their previous state of residence. The results imply that the destiny of demographics will be conditioned, to some extent, by the migratory patterns of Latinos and the dyad of departure and destination states. When Latinos leave liberal (conservative) states, they bring more liberal (conservative) policies. In short, Latinos seem to pack their politics when moving across state lines.
... Some research exists that explores the impact of migration on the partisan leaning and political orientation of individuals (Brown, 1988;MacDonald & Franko, 2008). Others have identified large migration streams as a force for partisan change within regions and states (McDonald, 2011;Cook, 2011;Hood & McKee, 2010;Robinson & Noriega, 2010;Bishop 2008;Dupre & Scala, 2002;Gimpel & Schuknecht, 2001). We have learned less, however, about the interplay between partisan affinity and residential relocation. ...
We explore the connection between residential migration choices and political party identification by movers who change their political party registration. We find that an impressive number of migrants choose neighbourhoods that favor their new party of registration. The association between the party change of the migrant and the balance of local partisanship in their new neighborhood cannot be accounted for by a process of neighbourhood socialisation because the move is too recent for socialisation pressures to have operated. It is more likely that the migrant's political transition occurred well before the relocation that shaped the destination search. Relocation offers an opportunity to mark a previously transformed partisan preference on the voter rolls. In this sense, partisan identification is stable, but observing any large subset of migrants may make it appear unhinged, as this group collectively takes its opportunity to officially disclose their change in party loyalty when they have a chance to relocate and must re-register.
... … This kind of residential sorting reinforces political similarities within communities and as a result accentuates political differences across different communities and others (e.g. Cho et al., 2013;Gimpel and Hui, 2015;Hood and McKee, 2010) have linked such polarization to migrant movements. But, largely reflecting the absence of data portraying voting patterns at that scale for the country as a whole, there have been no studies establishing the intensity of polarization at the sub-county scale across the United States, let alone whether this has increased at recent elections. ...
In the large literature on the growing polarization of the American electorate and its representatives relatively little attention is paid to the spatial polarization of voters for the two parties at presidential elections. Bishop argued this has increased as the result of
residential location decisions: Democratic Party supporters have increasingly moved to neighborhoods where others of that persuasion are already congregated, for example. His analyses at the county scale are geographically incommensurate with that argument,
however; the lacuna is filled using precinct-level data for the entire United States for the 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. Multilevel modelling shows polarization at those elections was significantly greater at the precinct than the county, state and division scales. Change over the three elections at the precinct scale was probably associated with redistricting and reduced support from the Democratic Party by some groups.
... In the twentyfirst century though, the pace of change in the South has subsided, and while regional differences remain, perhaps they are not as dramatic as those of years past. Moreover, the political and social changes that have taken place in the region have been uneven, leading some analysts to see more regional diversity now (Brown and Bruce 2010;Hood and McKee 2010;Knotts 2009;Woodard 2006). The question then is how different the southern states currently are from the rest of the nation and how similar they are to one another. ...
... On the other hand, the South appears to be less cohesive now than in the past. Much of this decline in regional cohesion may be the result of economic and demographic changes, which have changed in a very uneven way across the South (Hood and McKee 2010;MacManus 2012). If this diversity within the South increases over the next couple of decades, it will be more important than ever to talk about differences between the southern states. ...
This study examines whether the contemporary South can still be considered a meaningful political region by analyzing the political distinctiveness and political cohesion of the region. Political refers to the extent to which the states in the region are different from the rest of the country in relevant political characteristics. Political cohesion refers to the extent to which the states in the region are similar to each other in relevant political characteristics. We find that for presidential and congressional voting, the South is at least as political distinctive now as it was in the 1980s, but the cohesion of the region has declined, at least for presidential voting. The ideological distinctiveness of the South, for both political elites and the mass electorate, also has not diminished since the 1980s, but again the ideological cohesion of the states has declined. Finally, the South remains considerably more conservative that the North when it comes to public policy outcomes, although on this dimension both the distinctiveness and the cohesion of the South are lower now than in the 1980s.
... I find that realignment positively contributes to the probability of splitting. However, I also find no indication that realignment is likely to continue, echoing recent findings by scholars of Southern politics (e.g., Hood & McKee, 2010). Second, the data lend support to the thesis that voters view local officials independently from federal officials and can be focused enough on local-level politics to generate representational splits. ...
In a sample of 12 states across all regions of the United States, I find that one of every three counties supports a different party for president than for its local legislature. I use a unique data set containing partisan affiliations of county councillors to analyze contexts that might lead voters to choose different parties at different levels of government. I find support for three explanations of representational splits: incomplete realignment, local electoral factors, and differentials in party strength. This article takes a step toward understanding how parties and partisan identities operate in a federal system.
... It could be that the greater inclination of younger southerners to vote for Democrats is a result of there being a disproportionate number of young southerners who grew up in the North. Hood and McKee (2010) found that factor to be an important explanation for the support that Obama received in North Carolina in 2008. Unfortunately, while the 2012 ANES survey asked respondents where they grew up, that variable is not included in the most recent release (April, 2014). ...
... There is some evidence that the most recent northern migrants have been disproportionately Democratic, despite their high income levels, especially in states such as Virginia and North Carolina (MacManus 2012). The growing success of Democrats in northern Virginia and in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina attests to this trend (Hood and McKee 2010). The Democratic appeal to these new southerners presumably is because they are well-educated professionals who are liberal on many issues; also, there may be a sizable number of blacks and other minorities in this group. ...
Young voters contributed disproportionately to Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2012. In fact, if the electorate had been limited to those over 30 years old, Mitt Romney might be in the White House today. Obama captured 60 percent of the vote of those under 30, compared to 49 percent of those over 30, according to the national exit polls (Schier and Box- Steffensmeier 2013, 86). A similar pattern characterized the 2008 presidential election: Obama won 66 percent of the vote among those aged 29 or less, but under one-half of voters older than 45 (Pomper 2010, 53). The tendency for younger voters to be disproportionately Democratic emerged in the 2004 presidential election. Prior to that, Democratic presidential candidates did not consistently do better among younger voters. In 2000, for example, Al Gore did as well among older voters as he did among younger voters, and in 1992, Bill Clinton did his best among older voters, as did Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988 (Pomper 2001, 138; Pomper 1989, 133).
... Whereas in-migration from the North was once thought to help the Republican Party, we find that white migrants today are more Democratic in their partisanship and voting behavior than their native southern counterparts. Although political observers have long speculated about this transition and scholars have shown suggestive evidence within individual states and particular elections (e.g., Hood and McKee 2010), the current analysis offers a more complete view of the changing patterns of political behavior in the American South since the 1970s. ...
... Others, however, conclude that large migrant populations can create a fundamental political shift in their new community (e.g., in the case of Florida, see Parker 1988; for Texas, see Frendreis 1989; for North Carolina, see Hood and McKee 2010). Historically, scholars have concluded that northern in-migration contributed to the realignment of the South to the Republican Party (e.g., Wolfinger and Hagan 1985;Bass and De Vries 1995;Scher 1997;Lublin 2004). ...
... 8. Similar to Brown (1988), Hood and McKee (2010) find that migrants are less partisan than natives, making them swing voters rather than loyal Democrats. to withdraw from their party in response to the pull of the dominant party in their new community. ...
What are the political implications of domestic migration to the American South? Using the American National Election Studies, we track the changing dynamic of party identification and presidential voting among white southern in-migrants and natives. Although it was once thought southern in-migration from the rest of the country contributed to Republican ascendancy in the region, we find that is no longer true. In the 1970s and 1980s, white migrants to the South were more Republican than natives. Today, white southern in-migrants are more likely to affiliate with the Democratic Party and vote Democratic, suggesting population change could ultimately shift the partisan balance in the region.
