- In recent years, young Americans moved to rural areas at rates not seen in decades.
- But that doesn’t mean they’re turning rural counties red.
- Millennials and Gen Zers became more conservative, like the country as a whole.
In the years leading up to the election, young people flocked from urban areas to rural counties at record rates — but they didn’t necessarily bring their big-city politics with them.
In fact, nine of the top 10 counties to which Americans aged 25 to 44 moved between 2020 and 2023 voted for Trump this year. All of those top counties happen to be classified as rural or have under 250,000 residents.
This is based on a Business Insider analysis of 2020 and 2024 election results as reported by The New York Times, and a September report on migration patterns among younger Americans by University of Virginia demographer Hamilton Lombard.
Even Hays County, Texas — the only county in that group that voted Democratic in both 2020 and 2024 — got more red, as seen in the table below. The colored swing column in the table shows the percentage point change in vote share for Trump between 2020 and 2024. The blue squares mean fewer of that county’s votes went to Trump in 2024; however, the majority still went Republican in both elections, as seen in the last two columns. Counties in red swung even more toward Trump in 2024 than in 2020.
The politics of America’s counties are changing
Rural areas moved right, and big cities like New York got substantially redder between 2020 and 2024, said economist Jed Kolko. He said some of the shift in already-conservative areas might be because movers wanted to go somewhere that aligned with their politics. City dwellers also may have gotten more conservative.
“The people who leave big blue cities probably don’t have the same politics — or don’t have exactly the same politics — as people who stay,” Kolko said. “And wanting to move to a community where people have similar views could be on the list of reasons why someone moves.”
Millennials and Gen Zers — both represented in that 25 to 44 group — have swung more to the right. Vice President Kamala Harris’ margins among those groups shrunk in 2024 from President Joe Biden’s lead in 2020, exit polling from CNN as of November 6, the most recent data available, showed.
While turnout of voters aged 18 to 29 rose in 2020, it fell again in 2024. Those who did vote went more conservative. In 2024, 46% of young voters voted for Trump, compared to 36% in 2020, an analysis from the nonpartisan Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement found.
To be sure, early exit poll data has a wide margin of error. As more votes are counted in the coming days and months, more precise data on the shape of the 2024 electorate will be released.
Data also shows that while age may not be as determinative of political affiliation as it once was, where people migrated from might be a bit more instructive, per the bipartisan public policy organization the Economic Innovation Group. Red areas with migration influxes from blue counties saw, in some cases, smaller swings towards Trump, and in at least one such county Trump lost vote share.
Some of those voting swings might be chalked up to increasing political polarization along educational lines.
“There’s been a trend over many elections that places where more people have a college degree vote more democratic,” Kolko said. “That trend was even stronger in 2024 than it was in previous years.”
Did you move to a rural area, or somewhere that aligns better with your politics? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com.
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