Full Citation
Title: How Interstate Highways Created Republican Suburbs
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2010
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Abstract: How does public policy influence geographic partisan sorting, the increasing tendency for Americans to live in enclaves of like-minded partisans? Standard models attribute the pattern of such changes almost entirely to the aggregate effect of individual citizens homophily: the natural tendency of citizens to be drawn to and cluster with similar individuals. I present an alternative account that suggests that government policies that influence mobility also can influence citizens personal calculus of residential location. To test this hypothesis, I examine the effects of Interstate Highway System on the political development of suburban communities. Combining construction data from the Interstate Highway System with county-level presidential election data for the years 1948-2008, I show that suburban communities with Interstate highways became as much as five points more Republican than they would have been in the absence of freeway constructiona large enough effect to change a swing district to a landslide district. A metropolitan case study based on Wisconsin precinct-level data and a multi-election national analysis of county-level data shows that such political effects emerge quickly after freeway construction, especially in previously undeveloped areas. These findings demonstrate that federal policies can change politics not only by directly influencing individual welfare, but also by influencing residential choice and the spatial relationships among citizens.
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Authors: Nall, Clayton
Publisher: Harvard University
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Housing and Segregation, Migration and Immigration, Other
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