{"id":59575,"date":"2014-11-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-researchers-find-americans-sorting-themselves-into-politically-similar-counties\/"},"modified":"2014-11-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T00:00:00","slug":"uri-researchers-find-americans-sorting-themselves-into-politically-similar-counties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/11\/uri-researchers-find-americans-sorting-themselves-into-politically-similar-counties\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 researchers find Americans sorting themselves into politically similar counties"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tPredict increasing intolerance from lack of exposure to alternative views<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 November 17, 2014 \u2013 A pair of researchers from the 溏心vlog免费B站 has analyzed more than 40 years of election data and relocation patterns around the United States and found that Americans are increasingly sorting themselves into politically homogeneous communities. But it hasn\u2019t happened in the way they expected.<\/p>\n


\n\tTheir research was published online last week in the journal Political Geography.<\/p>\n


\n\tCorey Lang, assistant professor of environmental economics, and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz, associate professor of political science, sought evidence for claims made in the 2008 book The Big Sort that suggested that people were choosing to live in politically segregated communities where Republicans and Democrats had little interaction with each other. Many academics disagreed with author Bill Bishop\u2019s hypothesis, so Lang and Pearson-Merkowitz decided to test it.<\/p>\n


\n\tThey examined data from presidential elections for every county in the country from 1976 to 2012, scrutinizing how voter support for political parties changed from one election to another. What they found in the 1970s and 80s was the reverse of what The Big Sort predicted. <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt was a complex story back then. The data suggest that counties were becoming more politically competitive,\u201d said Lang. \u201cIn some cases counties were even switching parties.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBeginning in 1996, however, partisanship began to increase and counties became more and more politically polarized. During the last decade, there has become less and less political competition in most counties.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe political parties are competitive on a national level, but on a county basis there are fewer and fewer counties up for grabs,\u201d said Pearson-Merkowitz. \u201cAnd each election we\u2019re seeing more polarization.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tAccording to Lang and Pearson-Merkowitz, the increase in competitiveness that occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s was due to the dramatic change that occurred in what the parties stood for. The Democratic Party solidified its position as the party of Civil Rights, labor unions, and abortion rights, while the Republican Party became increasingly conservative on a host of issues.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThat party change made it look like we were living in more diverse counties, but no one actually moved,\u201d Pearson-Merkowitz said. \u201cInstead, as the political parties figured out what their positions were, people decided what parties to associate with. The places are politically the same as they used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFor example, Democratic counties in the South in the 1960s were Democratic because that was the party that was more conservative. Those same people are now Republican because it is now the conservative party.<\/p>\n


\n\tAn examination of IRS data showing voter movement from one county to another suggested that migration did not play a role in the shifting levels of party support.<\/p>\n


\n\tBoth professors agree that this increasing polarization is worrisome.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s good for the country for people to be exposed to a diversity of political opinion and party identifications,\u201d Lang said. \u201cBut it\u2019s concerning when there is such a disconnect between locations that rural Texans cannot even understand New Yorkers because they nnever hear the other\u2019s perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cAnd when we see regional polarization, we\u2019re likely to see an even greater polarization in government,\u201d added Pearson-Merkowitz. \u201cBeing elected by an area that\u2019s more and more one-sided means there\u2019s little reason to compromise. It also means there will likely be less turnover among elected officials.

\nBut competition and turnover is healthy for a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThis increasing polarization is happening at the same time that the highly partisan television news channels became popular, like Fox and MSNBC.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cNow, not only are people living in more politically homogenous areas, but the news they watch is homogenous,\u201d Pearson-Merkowitz said. \u201cSo not only are they not getting different views from their neighbors, they\u2019re not even hearing different views from the news. And that\u2019s likely to produce a very intolerant population because they have no exposure to the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tSo while the researchers say \u201cthe big sort\u201d is happening, it is not occurring from selective movement of voters to communities of similar political perspectives.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cPeople are not necessarily moving, but places are becoming more entrenched in their partisanship,\u201d concluded Pearson-Merkowitz. \u201cWe\u2019re becoming more blue and red and less purple, and that\u2019s concerning to me.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Predict increasing intolerance from lack of exposure to alternative views KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 November 17, 2014 \u2013 A pair of researchers from the 溏心vlog免费B站 has analyzed more than 40 years of election data and relocation patterns around the United States and found that Americans are increasingly sorting themselves into politically homogeneous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}