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Trump Joins 60,000 a Year in Leaving New York for Florida

Florida has courted retirees for decades, but it appears to be finding more success at luring working-age migrants.

Trump Joins 60,000 a Year in Leaving New York for Florida
U.S. President Donald Trump smiles after signing an executive order during an event in The Villages, Florida, U.S. (Photographer: Eve Edelheit/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump isn’t the only New Yorker moving to Florida.

Billionaire Carl Icahn recently disclosed a similar move along with several hedge fund billionaires -- and those are just the more high-profile examples. Florida leads the nation in attracting residents, with 808,789 new arrivals in 2018, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released this week. An estimated 63,033 came from New York, the biggest domestic source.

Florida has courted retirees for decades, but it appears to be finding more success at luring working-age migrants. Whether they’re moving for the year-round sunshine or the lack of a state income tax, who they are could matter tremendously for Trump in 2020. With that many new arrivals each year, they could tip the scales in America’s largest swing state, where presidential elections are decided by razor-thin margins.

Trump Joins 60,000 a Year in Leaving New York for Florida

The 2018 data for New York has a margin of error of plus or minus 7,071. The data for new domestic arrivals in Florida overall has an error margin of plus or minus 22,336, while arrivals from abroad had a margin of error of plus or minus 12,275.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nathan Crooks in Miami at ncrooks@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Levin in Miami at jlevin20@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Steve Dickson, Dan Reichl

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