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[deleted] t1_ivoyy6v wrote

The better question is, why did it take so long? Why did the political trajectories differ so dramatically between VT and NH? VT was the reddest state in the country in the 1980s. NH is currently tied with VT for being the least religious state in the country. There's French influence that still endures in pockets of the state. I'm unsure what the hell the modern Republican party is supposed to offer NH.

The narratives around migration are so braindead, too. A majority of NH residents were not born in NH. People move for a lot of reasons. It's a free country. Unless you're severely mentally ill, politics is probably not the primary reason you move to a new state.

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SkiingAway t1_ivp5iqt wrote

> The narratives around migration are so braindead, too. A majority of NH residents were not born in NH. People move for a lot of reasons. It's a free country. Unless you're severely mentally ill, politics is probably not the primary reason you move to a new state.

I'll also note the % not born in NH was basically steady for 1990-2012 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/upshot/where-people-in-each-state-were-born.html#New_Hampshire.

I don't think it's changed much since.

So I don't think it really explains political trends in the past few decades very well.

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[deleted] t1_ivp95fb wrote

Yeah. This current hybrid/WFH wave that people love to hate on social media is not a novel phenomenon either. There was a large influx of liberal tech workers to southern NH in the 1980s and 1990s too.

It's funny as hell to me, because my uncle made the same move as I did, for similar but independent reasons, just 30 years before I did. Tech jobs are concentrated north and west of Boston. Very little work to be found south of Boston. We didn't start the fire!

If this was some moronic ideological sorting process, I'd live where my brother does and vice-versa. But he'd take a massive paycut moving to NH. There's a lot more union work in his trade south of Boston. How much is the average person willing to pay to have a red asshole in charge instead of a blue asshole? The vast majority of people don't care that much about these stupid elections.

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