Texas surges in poll of best states to live

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From The Dallas Business Journal...

Texas is gaining ground as one of America's favorite places to live.


The Lone Star State ranks No. 7 in the latest Harris Interactive Inc. poll of states where Americans would like to live. Last year, Texas ranked 14th.

California is No. 1, followed by Florida and Hawaii.

The poll, conducted online July 14-20 among 2,215 respondents, named the next most popular states to live as Colorado, No. 4; New York, No. 5; Arizona, No. 6; Texas, No. 7; North Carolina, No. 8; Virginia, No. 9; and Washington, No. 10.

Nevada, which didn't make the top 15 last year, moved up to No. 12 in 2003.

States that slipped include North Carolina, which was No. 5 last year; Montana, which dipped from No. 11 to No. 13; Alaska, which moved from No. 12 to No. 15; and Tennessee, last year's No. 7, which didn't even break the top 15 this year.

Rochester, N.Y.-based Harris Interactive [Nasdaq: HPOL] is a market research and consulting company.

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Just one little bitty problem with the poll...

Yesterday's census Bureau news release was about how California and New York people were fleeing the state. They both had a net outflow of Americans between 1995 and 2000.

To wit...

- Many of the inmigrants to Nevada, Arizona and other fast-growing
states were from California, which had a net outmigration of
755,000 people to other states between 1995 and 2000 second only
to New York, which had a net outmigration of 874,000.

If Cal is such a favorable place to live, how come it doesn't have a net inflow of migrants?

Also, New York... the nbr 5 state, how come more people move out than move in?

Could there be, even a slight, small, tiny chance, that these opinion polls are hogwash?