Americans prefer to live where they can keep what they earn and be left alone — even if the freebies are better elsewhere.

The US Census Bureau just released state population data for mid-year 2025, along with updates for all previous years back to the 2020 Census. The Census estimates population growth with data on births, deaths, international migration, and “domestic migration” (among states and territories of the US). I always enjoy looking at the domestic migration data because they tell us a lot about where Americans prefer to live.

Freedom predicts net domestic migration fairly well. A lot of people have been pointing out the fact that Americans tend to move from “blue” to “red” states. The driving factor is not partisanship itself, but the different policies offered to residents of these states. The federal level has long been more complicated, but at the state level, Republican-led states still tend to enact “Reaganite” policies of limited government and free enterprise, while Democrat-led states tend to enact special-interest-oriented regulations and spending programs.

I’ve also seen a lot of people ranking states by total number of net domestic migrations (interstate moves in or out). Obviously, bigger states are going to dominate the top and bottom end of these rankings. Net domestic migrants over a period, as a percentage of the initial population, is much more useful. To make comparisons across periods of different lengths (as reported data often differ), divide by the number of years to yield an estimated average annual rate of net domestic migration.

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