This is one in a series of stories that are part of Swing County, Swing State, a collaborative project between lehighvalleylive.com and nj.com that explores Northampton County’s critical role in the upcoming presidential election.
Kelly Conway moved with her husband from Miami to Plainsboro, New Jersey in 2000. As retail executives they made enough to live comfortably, but that didn’t mean they were excited to give quite so much of it to the State of New Jersey, she said.
“The school taxes were ridiculous — all the taxes in New Jersey were high — and it just didn’t feel like you were getting anything for it,” Conway, 59, said in a recent interview.
They left the high cost of living and congested commutes of North Jersey behind and moved in 2006 to Northampton County in Pennsylvania. “We were in three times the house that we were in in New Jersey,” she said.
It felt up-and-coming, was a great place to raise their daughter, and came with plenty of open space, though there was always a chance of getting stuck behind a slow tractor on a rural road.
“You’re in the wrong place if a tractor is going to wreck your day,” she said. “This is what it is.”
Their family is among many who have made the move from New Jersey and New York, seeing an opportunity for more bang for their buck in the Lehigh Valley.
It’s not a new phenomenon by any means, but as Northampton County has reinvented itself in the post-Bethlehem Steel era — with growing cities, new industry and housing developments springing up in rural towns — there’s even more to lure some residents westward to the Keystone State.
A move to the county also comes with the dubious honor of voting in one of the most crucial swing counties in the country. Northampton County voters have a nearly perfect record of picking the presidential race winner.
Conway, a lifelong Democrat, called it “a great feeling” to vote in such an important place. She said she found plenty of like-minded people and helps phonebank for candidates.
The question of whether this migration of New Jerseyans and New Yorkers has affected the way Northampton County votes over the years is one without a simple answer.
Both coastal states are overwhelmingly Democratic, but instead of leaning bluer, Northampton County has actually become more red in recent years. A Muhlenberg College poll three weeks ago showed President Donald Trump leading Democrat Joe Biden by three points there, and he won the county by about 5,000 votes in 2016.
“Sometimes we take the whole and we apply it to the individuals. In this case, we think, well, it’s a blue state, it must be anybody that comes from there is going to be blue,” said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. “And that’s just not the case.”
If you look at the demographics of those moving to certain developing suburbs, he said, many are more likely to fit the profile of a Republican voter.
Borick, a professor of political science, said that migration has affected life in the Valley in myriad ways, from demographics to transportation, “but the impact of politics is a little less clear.”
The county’s slight slide to the right could be attributable to both residents' evolving views and the addition of new voters, he said.
“It’s not either/or,” Borick said. “I think when you get down to the net impact on a region and why this is a swing place, I think all those things matter.”
Moving house
People have been moving to the Lehigh Valley from New Jersey and New York for decades. But former U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent said he noticed it really picking up in the 1990s, after the completion of Interstate 78 better connected the Valley to the New York City metropolitan area.
“There were so many we used to joke that people thought Guiliani was the mayor and Whitman was the governor,” Dent said, referring to the mayor of New York and governor of New Jersey at that time.
Those moving to the area come from all walks of life, Dent said, including young families, retirees, and those of different socioeconomic levels and ethnic backgrounds.
County Executive Lamont McClure said if you want to see how many people have moved west to the region, you only have to look around on Sunday at all the Giants and Jets merchandise.
“It’s great for Northampton County. It’s given us an infusion of new blood that’s been very helpful to us on many levels,” including stimulating the economy, he said. The population has risen 2.5% since 2010, even while births and deaths stayed level, he noted.
The lure of lower taxes and cost of living is important, he said, but that’s not the only draw.
“We have very good public and private education, leading national universities, a wonderful open space program and park system that allows folks to recreate without traveling far,” he said. “We have a great quality of life here and they’re willing to make the drive or sit on the bus for an hour, hour and a half or two hours” to commute to work.
By the numbers
The best way to measure the influx of New Jerseyans and New Yorkers in Northampton County is via IRS migration data. It’s based on the number of people each year who file tax returns in a new place.
For each year from 2010 to 2018, more than half of those moving to the county — on average about 4,000 — are from elsewhere in Pennsylvania.
The top two other states whose residents are moving to Northampton County are consistently New Jersey followed by New York, with the former contributing significantly more than the latter.
As for where in New York and New Jersey those people are coming from, the biggest single contributor is Warren County, just over the river in New Jersey, with an average of 380 transplants each year.
Also losing dozens of residents to Northampton County each year are the New Jersey counties of Essex, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Morris, Somerset and Union. From New York, most transplants are from Brooklyn and Queens, the data shows.
Most of those counties are blue, but Warren, Hunterdon and Morris counties in New Jersey are solidly red. Warren County’s Republican bent is especially significant because the number leaving there for Northampton County was often 3 or 4 times more than the next highest counties from New Jersey and New York.
Gloria Lee Snover, chair of the Northampton County Republican Committee, said it makes sense that residents of Warren County and other red areas who have Republican values — like fiscal conservatism, less regulation or gun rights — would make the move across the river where they can find those things.
“Maybe that’s why they moved here,” she said. “Because regulations, fees, taxes, bureaucracy... that’s just the New York-New Jersey way.”
The IRS migration data only goes up to 2018, but real estate figures suggest even more transplants from the New York City metropolitan area are now calling Northampton County home.
Weichert Realtors said that usually between 5 and 10% of home buyers in the county are from metro markets like New York City, Long Island and Hudson County. Lately, it’s been 30%, said spokesman Mike Chambers.
Snover said the last six months has brought droves of New Yorkers, whom she speculated are trying to escape the big city during the coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s New York plates everywhere, at the grocery stores,” she said. “Houses are being purchased the day they’re on the market.”
New people, same politics?
McClure said that while the positive impact of the migration to Northampton County is “undeniable,” he doesn’t see it doing much to alter the area’s political leanings.
To the extent that there’s been any change in the electorate in recent years, he speculated it had more to do with people realigning themselves with the political party they feel is the best match for their views. Historically, he said, 10 or 12% of people in the county end up voting for a candidate not in their party.
“I think what you’re seeing here is people who have been voting that way, and now they’re making the switch,” he said.
Voter registration data shows that many people have been changing their party affiliation over the last dozen years. From 2008 to date, 17,558 changed affiliation to Republican, about half of whom were previously Democrats. In that same period, 14,532 switched to the Democratic party and about a third of them came from the Republican party.
Borick said any political waves caused by incoming residents from New York and New Jersey would probably be more noticeable locally compared to at the county level, because some municipalities are experiencing huge growth — and drawing certain demographics — while others are not.
“Where that growth has happened, the impact on the local political scene could be disproportionate. You get a municipality where they saw in 20 years the population go up by 30 or 40%. Certainly, that can have a transformative impact, as opposed to a place that hasn’t seen any change, or, just a point here or a point there.”
Matthew Munsey, a transplant from Virginia 12 years ago who now chairs the Northampton County Democratic Committee, said it’s helped the party in other towns.
“I think it’s been a net benefit for Democrats in the suburbs, like outside of Easton and Bethlehem,” he said. “In the last several years we’ve made some real gains in some local elections in that area.”
Another thing to consider, Borick said, is that Northampton County is known for its “pragmatic, moderate voters,” and that may rub off a bit on newcomers from either end of the political spectrum.
“Your community where you move will shape you, because you often assimilate, fall into the norms of life there,” he said. “If you come from someplace where it’s maybe more ideological, and you move into a place that is more moderate, and has a tradition of kind of moderate or more centrist politics, that might temper either your views, or maybe how you share those views.”
So while those coming from New York and New Jersey may be influencing things in Northampton County, the reverse is likely true, too.
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