Washington

Analysis | Where 2024 voters moved since 2020 — and how they registered

Published

2 years ago

April 11, 2024

Analysis | Where 2024 voters moved since 2020 — and how they registered

Between any two presidential elections, there is an enormous amount of churn in the electorate, both nationally and at the state level. A lot of this is obvious: People die, young people turn 18 and register to vote (and then often don’t vote again for a decade or two), people lose or gain interest in candidates or issues.

There’s another factor, too, that often goes underrecognized. Over the course of four years, a lot of people simply pull up stakes and move. And that, at least in theory, can have an effect on the outcome of an election.

This is not easy to track. The Census Bureau collects data on interstate moves year over year, but in the aggregate. We can’t see, for example, whether someone moved from one state to another and then back. And we can only guess at what the political effects might be. Is someone moving from Ohio to Michigan adding a Republican vote to the latter state or is it a Democrat seeking slightly bluer climes?

We have another set of data that offers us a better lens into this question of partisan flow. L2, a political data vendor, tracks individual registrations over time, including after people move across state lines. An analysis of that data offers a picture — albeit an incomplete one — of the influx and outflow of state residents by party.

There are two caveats that are worth keeping in mind.

The first is that not every move is captured in this data, even among voters who were registered in both states. In many cases, of course, people moving across state lines will register to vote for the first time in the new state; they won’t be reflected in this data. Nor will people who couldn’t be matched to their prior registrations (generally because they didn’t complete a change of address form with the post office).

The other caveat is that this analysis includes partisanship data that’s modeled by L2. In some states, registration is nonpartisan. In those states, L2 uses other data — voting patterns or demographics — to estimate partisanship.

With those qualifiers in place, we can simply jump into the data. What we were interested in was less the numbers of people going from state to state (given the qualifier about those numbers) than the patterns of that movement. For each state, we calculated the number of Democrats, Republicans and third-party or nonpartisans that moved into a state since 2020 and the number of each group that moved out. Then we presented those totals as a percentage of the state’s total population.

This was the result. Thicker bars on the left side than the right indicate more arrivals than departures. The bars are generally ordered by size: If the Republican bar is on top, more Republicans than other groups were coming or going.

There are a lot of nuances to pick out of those charts; we’ll leave you to that.

Let’s drill down on the question we started with, though — considering how this might affect the presidential race. Comparing the net change among partisans (that is, those arriving minus those leaving) to the 2020 vote, we see that more-Democratic states were often those with bigger positive inflows of Democrats, though it’s cloudy. That partisan correlation was much stronger in more-Republican states.

In the middle there we see the swing states that flipped around in 2016 and 2020. We can pull the eight closest states in 2020 out and see that the net change by party varies. In Georgia, there’s been a bigger positive change for Democrats; in Florida, strongly for Republicans.

But what are the actual numbers, you demand. Well, in Georgia, the net advantage (comparing parties after subtracting outgoing voters from incoming ones) was a gain of about 18,000 Democrats. In Florida, it was 124,000 Republicans.

But again, this is just a sliver of movement. The Census Bureau’s data on moves from 2021 to 2022 shows 50 percent more inflow to Florida than there were new arrivals tracked by L2 over all four years. In Georgia, the Census Bureau’s one-year total is more than twice the L2 numbers. People are missed — including people registering for the first time.

There’s one other point worth making: People who have newly moved are less likely to vote. Here’s other data from the Census Bureau, looking at the 2020 election.

There are a lot of reasons for this: They haven’t registered yet, for one, or they may not know where they are supposed to cast their ballot. People who move frequently are less likely to own homes and skew younger, and younger people vote less often.

In other words, do not use these numbers to make bold predictions about how this consistently close presidential contest will end up. Use them, instead, as a reminder to register and vote.

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Washington

Bridge collapse on Washington Avenue leaves emergency crews racing to rescue victims

Published

12 hours ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Bridge collapse on Washington Avenue leaves emergency crews racing to rescue victims

WHEELING, W.Va. — Emergency crews are responding to a major incident at the Washington Avenue Bridge, which has collapsed into Wheeling Creek.

Multiple police and firefighter units are on the scene, working swiftly to rescue those injured in the collapse.

Three injured workers have been taken to the hospital. Officials say one is a serious injury and two are non-life threatening.

Access to the area has been closed to facilitate rescue operations.

The bridge was closed in early December for a replacement that was expected to take nearly a year.

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Washington

Dynamite, Floods and Feuds: Washington’s forgotten river wars

Published

24 hours ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Dynamite, Floods and Feuds: Washington’s forgotten river wars

A look back at Washington’s historic flooding

It’s been a few weeks since the historic flooding hit the streets of western Washington, and if you scroll through social media, the shock still seems fresh. While some insist it was a once-in-a-generation disaster, state history tells a different story.

TUKWILA, Wash. – After floodwaters inundated western Washington in December, social media is still filled with disbelief, with many people saying they had never seen flooding like it before.

But local history shows the region has experienced catastrophic flooding, just not within most people’s lifetimes.

A valley under water

What may look like submerged farmland in Skagit or Snohomish counties is actually an aerial view of Tukwila from more than a century ago. Before Boeing, business parks and suburban development, the Kent Valley was a wide floodplain.

(Tukwila Historical Society)

In November 1906, much of the valley was underwater, according to city records. In some places, floodwaters reached up to 10 feet, inundating homesteads and entire communities.

“Roads were destroyed, river paths were readjusted,” said Chris Staudinger of Pretty Gritty Tours. “So much of what had been built in these areas got washed away.”

Staudinger has been sharing historical images and records online, drawing comparisons between the December flooding and events from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“It reminded me so much of what’s happening right now,” he said, adding that the loss then, as now, was largely a loss of property and control rather than life.

When farmers used dynamite

Records show flooding was not the only force reshaping the region’s rivers. In the late 1800s, farmers repeatedly used dynamite in attempts to redirect waterways.

“The White River in particular has always been contentious,” explained Staudinger. “For farmers in that area, multiple different times starting in the 1890s, groups of farmers would get together and blow-up parts of the river to divert its course either up to King County or down to Pierce County.”

Staudinger says at times they used too much dynamite and accidentally sent logs lobbing through the air like missiles.

In one instance, King County farmers destroyed a bluff, permanently diverting the White River into Pierce County. The river no longer flowed toward Elliott Bay, instead emptying into Commencement Bay.

Outraged by this, Pierce County farmers took their grievances to the Washington State Supreme Court. The court ruled the change could not be undone.

When flooding returned, state officials intervened to stop further explosions.

“To prevent anyone from going out and blowing up the naturally occurred log jam, the armed guards were dispatched by the state guard,” said Staudinger. “Everything was already underwater.”

Rivers reengineered — and erased

Over the next century, rivers across the region were dredged, dammed and diverted. Entire waterways changed or disappeared.

“So right where the Renton Airport is now used to be this raging waterway called the Black River,” explained Staudinger. “Connected into the Duwamish. It was a major salmon run. It was a navigable waterway.”

Today, that river has been reduced to what Staudinger described as “the little dry trickle.”

Between 1906 and 1916, the most dramatic changes occurred that played a role in its shrinking. When the Ballard Locks were completed, Lake Washington dropped by nine feet, permanently cutting off its southern flow.

A lesson from December

Despite modern levees and flood-control engineering, December’s storms showed how vulnerable the region remains.

“For me, that’s the takeaway,” remarked Staudinger. “You could do all of this to try and remain in control, but the river’s going to do whatever it wants.”

He warned that history suggests the risk is ongoing.

“You’re always one big storm from it rediscovering its old path,” said Staudinger.

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The Source: Information in this story came from the Tukwila Historical Society, MOHAI, Pretty Gritty Tours, and FOX 13 Seattle reporting and interviews.

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Washington

Deputies shoot armed suspect in Leesburg Walmart parking lot

Published

1 day ago

January 6, 2026

Press Room

Deputies shoot armed suspect in Leesburg Walmart parking lot

Deputies shot an armed suspect in the parking lot of a Walmart store in Leesburg, Virginia, late Tuesday morning, authorities say.

Detectives, deputies and special agents from the FBI had tracked the suspect down after he tried to rob the Bank of America at Dulles Crossing on Monday, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said. The suspect, who still hasn’t been named, didn’t get any money before taking off from the bank.

Authorities found the suspect was parked at the back of the Walmart parking lot just before noon Tuesday.

Deputies pulled up behind the suspect’s blue sedan at the back of the Walmart parking lot about 11:40 a.m. Tuesday. As they approached, the suspect got out with a gun, Sheriff Mike Chapman said.

Deputies then fired their guns at the suspect, hitting him. Chapman did not say how many times the suspect was shot or give specific information about his injuries.

Medics took the suspect to a hospital.

No deputies were injured, the sheriff’s office said.

Chapman said it was too early in the investigation to say if the suspect fired his gun or how many officers were involved in the shooting.

Stay with News4 for updates to this developing story.

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