When Policy Gets Personal: How Extremist State Policies Drive Geographic Sorting in a Reinvigorated Era of Federalism

During a reinvigorated era of American federalism—where state governmentsare enacting increasingly ideologically extreme policies on some of today’s most sali-ent culture war issues—it is important to examine whether ordinary Americans areaverse to moving to locations with ideologically extreme legislation. I evaluate howAmericans perceive ideologically extremist policies when appraising potential relo-cation options using a conjoint design on a national sample of ∼ 30, 000 respondents.The results show that policies that respondents perceive as ideologically extreme in-fluence their location preferences to a substantial degree, especially when such lawsare incongruent with their own preferences. I also undertake a supplementary obser-vational analysis focused on state abortion laws in the wake of the Dobbs SupremeCourt decision. This supplementary analysis shows that Democratic women livingin states without abortion restrictions are less likely to move to those with abortionbans post-Dobbs, compared to before the ruling. The implications of these find-ings highlight the potential of extremist laws to foster increased levels of politicallymotivated relocation between states going forward.