An article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press looks at the findings of the latest CRER while paper on domestic migration:
Although many new Chattanooga residents still come from elsewhere in Tennessee, California has been the Scenic City’s largest out-of-state source of transplants over a five-year period.
A net total of nearly 6,500 Californians moved to the Chattanooga metropolitan statistical area between December 2020 and December 2025, according to a recent paper from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The paper’s author, CRER director and chief economist Howard Wall, said that
“We’re not really different from other places in receiving Californians,” Wall said. “It’s really a California story as much as a Chattanooga story of a gigantic state where people are leaving. They’re moving to the South and Texas.”
“You’re not moving to Tennessee to turn it into a liberal paradise,” he said. “You’re leaving California to get a place that fits you more politically. I don’t have numbers on that, but I think it’s actually pretty significant.”