When will Texas become a swing state?

[phk]

Probably doubt it.

Hispanics are prone to convert to Protestantism more so in TX than they are in CA.

[phk]

It all depends on how these migrants from the other states vote? I know everyone is assuming they will vote 70-30 Republican, but what is that based on? Most people don't have the choice of moving where they want. I don't see why migrants from blue states wouldn't vote accordingly.

Wouldn't  conventional wisdom be for Republicans to be the first to leave a D-dominated state for Texas?

[phk]

If people are moving by their own choice, then of course yes. IMO a lot of people are moving because they are losing their jobs here, and are finding new ones in Texas. People who move to Arizona from here are much more Republican.

Here's to hoping they realize there's a correlation between "Is a Small Government State" and "Has jobs".

Right...lower costs of living/pay don't have anything to do with it.

Of course, which is why states like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Iowa (which all have roughly the same cost of living) are all experiencing large economic booms and population influxes comparable to Texas.

Indiana is an interesting addition on to the list, wouldn't you say? It detracts from the point I think you are trying to make.

If you are trying to say that the Midwest is shrinking even in spite of low costs of living due to the gutting of manufacturing in America, then I would agree with you.

Manufacturing output hasn't really been gutted. Just the labor previously employed.

[phk]

In response to the claim that Texas has been outperforming California in recent years, it will be useful to consider some data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis put into handy chart form by the notably non-socialistic publication The Economist:

That's even more impressive because California is a higher income state to begin with. I generally argue that the so called woes of blue states such as New York, Illinois and California are all relative because they start out with a higher per capita income.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128997.0

[phk]

If people are moving by their own choice, then of course yes. IMO a lot of people are moving because they are losing their jobs here, and are finding new ones in Texas. People who move to Arizona from here are much more Republican.

Here's to hoping they realize there's a correlation between "Is a Small Government State" and "Has jobs".

Right...lower costs of living/pay don't have anything to do with it.

Of course, which is why states like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Iowa (which all have roughly the same cost of living) are all experiencing large economic booms and population influxes comparable to Texas.

Indiana is an interesting addition on to the list, wouldn't you say? It detracts from the point I think you are trying to make.

If you are trying to say that the Midwest is shrinking even in spite of low costs of living due to the gutting of manufacturing in America, then I would agree with you.

Manufacturing output hasn't really been gutted. Just the labor previously employed.

Sure that may be the case. It still leads to high unemployment and doesn't detract from my point though.  

I ran a crude regression on net domestic migration from 2000-2009 and using a 2006 cost of living index as a measure of average (bad on my part, but that data is pretty hard to come by).

The R^2s' weren't that great but they do have some correlation.

I basically yielded:

. reg  DomesticNetMigration20002009 AverageCOL

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =      50
-------------+------------------------------           F(  1,    48) =    8.64
       Model |  1.5712e+12     1  1.5712e+12           Prob > F      =  0.0050
    Residual |  8.7312e+12    48  1.8190e+11           R-squared     =  0.1525
-------------+------------------------------           Adj R-squared =  0.1349
       Total |  1.0302e+13    49  2.1025e+11           Root MSE      =  4.3e+05

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dom~20002009 |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
  AverageCOL |  -11444.81   3894.052    -2.94   0.005    -19274.32   -3615.289
       _cons |    1188414   408547.1     2.91   0.005     366974.8     2009853

Summ

    Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
       State |         0
Dom~20002009 |        50      832.12    458533.5   -1686583    1182974
  AverageCOL |        50     103.766    15.64643       88.5      161.3

DomesticNetMigration20002009 = 1188414 + (-11444.81*B1)

[phk]

Added GDPChange20082009 as a third variable.

. reg  DomesticNetMigration20002009 AverageCOL GDPChange20082009

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =      50
-------------+------------------------------           F(  2,    47) =    4.29
       Model |  1.5892e+12     2  7.9460e+11           Prob > F      =  0.0195
    Residual |  8.7132e+12    47  1.8539e+11           R-squared     =  0.1543
-------------+------------------------------           Adj R-squared =  0.1183
       Total |  1.0302e+13    49  2.1025e+11           Root MSE      =  4.3e+05

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dom~20002009 |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
  AverageCOL |  -11613.92   3968.589    -2.93   0.005    -19597.69   -3630.149
GDP~20082009 |  -7792.759   25039.33    -0.31   0.757    -58165.39    42579.87
       _cons |    1196315   413226.3     2.90   0.006     365010.7     2027619
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

. reg  DomesticNetMigration20002009 GDPChange20082009

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =      50
-------------+------------------------------           F(  1,    48) =    0.01
       Model |  1.5126e+09     1  1.5126e+09           Prob > F      =  0.9334
    Residual |  1.0301e+13    48  2.1460e+11           R-squared     =  0.0001
-------------+------------------------------           Adj R-squared = -0.0207
       Total |  1.0302e+13    49  2.1025e+11           Root MSE      =  4.6e+05

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dom~20002009 |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
GDP~20082009 |   2240.464   26686.39     0.08   0.933    -51416.12    55897.04
       _cons |   3605.814   73372.53     0.05   0.961    -143919.5    151131.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

. reg  AverageCOL GDPChange20082009

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =      50
-------------+------------------------------           F(  1,    48) =    0.92
       Model |  224.893475     1  224.893475           Prob > F      =  0.3430
    Residual |  11770.8386    48  245.225804           R-squared     =  0.0187
-------------+------------------------------           Adj R-squared = -0.0017
       Total |  11995.7321    49  244.810859           Root MSE      =   15.66

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  AverageCOL |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
GDP~20082009 |  -.8638963   .9021033    -0.96   0.343    -2.677697     .949904
       _cons |   102.6965   2.480276    41.41   0.000     97.70957    107.6834
------------------------------------------------------------------------------