Conservatives leaving blue states tend to move to Florida and Texas, making those states redder, and many polls did not catch up.

The claim has three parts: (a) conservatives who leave blue states tend to move to Florida and Texas; (b) this migration is making those states redder; (c) many polls had not caught up with the shift. Judge each as of 2024-11-07. True: migration data or studies (e.g. IRS/Census migration flows combined with voter-registration or party-switch data, or academic or survey analyses of movers' partisanship) show that Republican or conservative out-migrants from Democratic-leaning states go disproportionately to Florida and/or Texas; evidence shows this migration contributed to the rightward shift in those states (registration gains, election margins); and 2024 polling in FL and/or TX understated the Republican margin. Mostly true: (a) and (b) hold, but the evidence for migration as a driver of the shift is suggestive rather than established, or (c) holds only weakly or for one of the two states. Mixed: about half the parts hold. For example, the migration pattern is real but the states' rightward shift is shown to come mainly from other causes (shifts among existing residents or Hispanic voters), or the polls were accurate. Mostly false: the migration is real but small or not distinctly conservative, so presenting it as making the states redder overstates it. False: evidence shows out-migrants to FL/TX are not disproportionately conservative and the polls did not miss the shift.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 How Florida became the center of the Republican universe Vox · 18 September 2023

   “Between November 2018 and June 2023, about 653,000 voters who had been previously registered in another state moved to Florida and re-registered, according to a Vox analysis of data from the nonpartisan data vendor L2. About 45 percent of them registered as Republicans, while only about 24 percent registered as Democrats.”

2. E2 How Florida became the center of the Republican universe Vox · 18 September 2023

   “his research suggests Republican dominance in the state has less to do with migration than with the overperformance of Florida’s Republican-leaning voting blocs.”

3. E3 WPA Intelligence: Who Nailed 2024’s Polls—and Who Missed the Mark? WPA Intelligence (via campaignnow.com) · 16 January 2025

   “Florida and Texas saw major errors, with Trump underestimated by 6 points in Florida and 8 points in Texas.”

4. E4 “Welcome to the Free State of Florida”: In-Migration and Rising Republicanism in the Sunshine State Political Science Quarterly (Oxford University Press) · 24 November 2025

   “The recent shift to GOP registration in Florida is remarkable and uniform: migrants from Democratic northeastern states are now nearly as likely to register as Republicans as midwestern migrants who have long been more likely to register with the GOP upon moving to Florida.”

For Florida, the migration part is supported. E1's analysis of L2 voter files found that of about 653,000 people who moved to Florida from other states between 2018 and 2023, about 45% registered Republican and about 24% Democrat. E4 found that recent migrants from Democratic northeastern states now register Republican almost as often as migrants from the Midwest. Whether this migration is what is turning Florida redder is less clear: research cited by Vox (E2) suggests Republican dominance there owes less to migration than to the overperformance of Florida's Republican-leaning voting blocs, and none of the evidence covers migration into Texas. The polling part holds: E3 reports that polls underestimated Trump by 6 points in Florida and 8 in Texas.