Where have all the good Ohioans gone?

As we recently reported, citizens who remain in Ohio have become increasingly unhappy with Bob Taft and the Republican Party, in direct contrast to national trends. But what about those who choose to leave Ohio for greener pastures?

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Ohio loses young, educated in droves

Ohio lost more young, single, college-educated people during the 1990s than any other state except Pennsylvania.

These up-and-comers struck out for Southern and Western cities, helping spur the rapid growth and booming economies of those cities, Census Bureau officials said yesterday.

Between 1995 and 2000, Naples, Fla.; Las Vegas; Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta; and Portland, Ore., were the major cities that saw the greatest growth among single people 25 to 39 who had college diplomas, according to the report. The rankings were based only on people who moved into the metro area from another U.S. address.

Knoxville News: Census: Blacks migrating to South in record numbers

A strong economy and vastly improved race relations are luring record numbers of black Americans to the South, a region that many deserted early in the 20th century.

More than 680,000 blacks 5 and older moved to the South from another region between 1995 and 2000, outnumbering the 333,000 who moved away by a better than 2-to-1 margin, according to a Census Bureau report released Thursday.

In Tennessee, 68,995 blacks reportedly migrated to the state, while 49,652 moved away. Blacks who move to the South tend to be more educated than those who never left the region.

The states to which Ohio's best and brightest are fleeing have two things in common:
1) Citizens there are increasingly identifying themselves as Republicans
2) Citizens there are enjoying crime reductions associated with passage of concealed carry reform laws.

BUT NOT IN OHIO.