So, Mikey Graham has a post up claiming that New Hampshire is the second most popular State for domestic migration by “the wealthy” from Massachusetts due to its tax policy. If you take just a few moments to dig into the details, you will see that Mikey’s broader claim … that New Hampshire’s tax policy acts as a magnet for domestic migration … is pretty damn DECEPTIVE.
The details-trail begins with this tweet:
From there to the linked article, which has this claim:
“Florida and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly the most popular choices for relocation,” the CPA report states.“While some may argue that a move to Florida is driven by a desire for better weather and a different lifestyle, the fact that the second most popular destination is New Hampshire suggests that people want to stay in the area but may be motivated instead by a lower cost of living, including a lower tax burden.
The “CPA report” relies on an unscientific survey of Certified Public Accountants for its claim that New Hampshire is the second most popular destination because of taxes:
82% of CPAs surveyed indicated that their high-income clients have expressed plans to leave Massachusetts in the next 12 months. Florida and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly the most popular choices for relocation.
In other words, to the extent that the CPA survey is correct, all that it tells us is that some unknown number of rich people, presumably rich white liberals, are moving to New Hampshire from Massachusetts. Nothing about the actual numbers. Nothing about what the CPA survey represents in terms of total migration from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.
The 2022 election gives us a very good idea of how domestic migration has affected voting in New Hampshire, but first a brief digression to the “big picture,” so we can see how useless this CPA report actually is. The CPA report references the Tax Foundation:
In a recent report, the Tax Foundation analyzed IRS data and found that Massachusetts is losing more residents than almost any other state in the country.
From the Tax Foundation:
So with a population of approximately 1.4 million, New Hampshire … .73% … added a little over 10,000 residents from 2019 to 2020. Meanwhile, with a population of approximately 29 million, Texas … .46% … added a little over 133,000 residents. Not so impressive when you look at actual numbers versus percentages is it?
Moreover domestic migration is making New Hampshire BLUER, not redder, as I noted in a recent post:
… Woke Hampshire is neither a Red State nor a Purple State. It is a Blue State. The last time the GOP Presidential candidate got more than fifty percent of the vote was 1988. And since COVID it has gotten much bluer. Senator Hassan was elected in 2016 by barely more than 1,000 votes. In 2022 she was reelected by more than 55,000 votes.
Woke Hampshire has become much bluer recently for two reasons. One is that Governor Sununu was one of the more extreme COVID Governors. To borrow a phrase, he chose Fauciism over freedom. His lockdowns, mask-mandates, tacit encouragement of businesses to impose vaccine-mandates, among other things, drove Red voters to leave the State.
The other reason is that Sununu, since being elected Governor in 2016, has fully embraced and encouraged woke. …
How they deceive!
