Even Knoxville? It’s the regional capital of east Tennessee, a traditional Republican stronghold. Just the other day I was arguing with my mom who lives in Knoxville. She was saying it had been overrun by liberals from other states and I was saying no way, it’s still deep red country. I wonder if I was wrong in that.
Since the map is so large I'm going to put the link to the wikipedia article about the 2016 presidential election in TN. If you look at the map at the right in the article, you'll see some of our counties are turning pink instead of being deep red. Knox County is the pale pink towards the upper right. It went 58.53% Trump/34.80% Clinton so not terrible, but the next largest county in East TN, Sullivan, was 75.43% Trump/20.20% Clinton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Tennessee
And I would agree with your mom, that there's lots of liberals moving in because the Knoxville area has been ranked as one of the best retirement areas and best places to raise a family for several years.
I live in one of the paler pink areas. Our results were about the same as Knox County, and we're a military town! I'm born and raised Tennessean but that's why I'm considering a move. Have a few years to decide though.
“She was saying it had been overrun by liberals from other states and I was saying no way, it’s still deep red country. I wonder if I was wrong in that.”
I’m up in the tri-cities. We are seeing lots of out of staters moving in, buying up houses. As soon as the house gets on the market it is sold. Our realtor is saying 70% are from out-of-state. But the good thing is he says most of them say they want to move here because they don’t like the politics where they came from. Let’s hope that’s true.