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Title: Why Partisans Don't Sort: The Constraints on Political Segregation

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2015

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Abstract: By various measures, Americans today appear more socially divided along partisan lines than at any point in recent history. This polarization extends to partisans evaluation of places, with Democrats more likely than Republicans to prefer denser and more racially diverse and urban communities. Scholars therefore have speculated that Americans are also increasingly geographically sorting by partisanship. In two survey experiments, we find that the two parties differ over aspects of what makes an ideal community, but both value a set of community traits associated with neighborhood quality. We show that these quality preferences, combined with resource constraints, leave Americans with few opportunities to migrate along party lines, whether deliberately or inadvertently. As a result, Republicans and Democrats are, on average, not migrating to more politically distinct communities. On a key life decision that shapes American political geography, practical constraints prevent the translation of polarized attitudes into polarized behavior.

Url: http://web.stanford.edu/~nall/docs/gaweb.pdf

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Authors: Nall, Clayton; Mummolo, Jonathan

Publisher: Stanford University

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Housing and Segregation, Other

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