Red-Blue Roundtable: Bill Bishop
The Big Sort is big because we aren't just separating by political party. We're sorting by economy, by ways of life, by education, by belief and, only every election day, by politics.
America really is different from place to place. To show that, Bob Cushing developed a simple scheme. He divided the nation's 3100 counties into four groups based on the 2004 election results. There were counties that voted in a landslide (more than 20 percentage points) for George Bush. They are bright red in the charts below.
Those counties that voted for Bush but at margins under 20 points are in a lighter red (well, kinda purple).
The counties that voted for John Kerry in a landslide are bright blue and the counties that voted for the Democrat at margins under 20 percentage points are light blue.
It so happens that about a quarter of the nation's population are in each of these four groups. So things are nice and (almost) even.
Over time, these county groups were collecting different kinds of people. For instance, here we can see that the blue counties from 2004 were pulling in more people with college degrees. The greater the vote for the Democrat, the higher the proportion of the population that has a college degree. (Get used to this stairstep pattern.)
Meanwhile, the dark red counties from '04 were collecting more people who went to church. Not surprisingly, we also found that 45% of the people in dark red counties attended Bible study. In strong Kerry counties, 28.7% of the people attended a prayer or Bible group.
And red counties collected white Americans.
Opinions differed by geography. Here are our four county groups showing the percentage of people who feel "strongly" that homosexuality should be accepted.
And finally, here are the percentages of self-described liberals in 2004 who said invading Iraq was the right decision.
To me, this is the most interesting chart of the bunch. The meaning of "liberal" changes from place to place. A liberal in a heavy Bush county is a lot more conservative than a liberal in a Kerry dark blue community. This tells me that we are all powerfully affected by our neighbors — and that we have so segregated ourselves that the basic language to describe politics has different meanings in different places.
No wonder we're buying different books in different places! --Bill Bishop
See the whole Red-Blue Roundtable.
Will Collier on October 10, 2008 at 06:20 AM
Regarding the first chart, is there a similar breakdown for BS degrees? Pardon a poor old ignorant engineer for pointing this out, but a BA is hardly the sole measure of "education."
Steve on October 10, 2008 at 06:37 AM
Am I looking at the first chart correctly? It looks like the proportions have stayed roughly the same with respect to the landslide categories. 12/8 in 1970 and 29/20 in 2000. How is this a change? From 70 to 2000 Landslide Dems BA degrees increased by a factor of 2.42 and landslide Reps BA degrees increased by a factor of 2.5. Again no real relative difference.
Mrs. Davis on October 10, 2008 at 06:40 AM
Do you have a map of counties in these colors?
Ben on October 10, 2008 at 07:01 AM
That's part of the reason I am going to move. Who wants to live around people who hate you and want to steal your money and put people you admire in prison for ideological reasons?
You can't have a conversation without listening to how people hate Bush or hate religious people or hate Sarah Palin or hate whatever else. And they want government power so they can act on this stuff.
Peg C. on October 10, 2008 at 07:31 AM
Pigeonholing is irresistible, yet so many of us do not fit into a hole. I was a lifelong lefty feminist Dem, now I am hardcore conservative. I have a B.A. in psych and work in IT as a system programmer. I grew up in blue West L.A., went to private school with stars' kids and now live in the purplish Hudson Valley of NY. I never go to church and am college-educated, yet now despise (yes, despise) the MSM and Hollywood and would give my right arm to live in a hard red area/state. I drive a VW, eat granola, hate smoking, love Sarah Palin, don't care for McCain and despise Obama. I donated a lot to Fred Thompson's campaign, listen to Rush and Mark Levin, read righty blogs voraciously and almost never watch or read news/MSM. I own and enjoy 100s of CDs (and several iPods/iPhones) full of lefty musical artists. I can't find a movie to watch that won't deeply offend and outrage me to the point of high blood pressure due to either anti-Bush dialogue or insane, moonbat actors.
Plenty of us just don't fit any hole, so these charts do not tell the whole story and never will.
geokstr on October 10, 2008 at 07:42 AM
Bill:
Interesting but misleading in a few places.
- What you call "White Flight" is just as much a sorting by minorities moving INTO communities of their own ethnicity in the larger urban areas as it is whites running away from minorities, and reproducing at far higher rates when they get there. Moreover, you're implying some odious deliberate re-segregation by whites.
- It also ignores that the first thing that minorities who have attained a degree of personal success do is move away from their old urban communities into the suburbs where there are better schools, less crime and better services, where they are almost universally welcomed by the communities. This new "sorting" is not so much about "race" as it is about grouping together by levels of shared values, personal responsibility, unwillingness to live in the victim mentality, and trying to build a better life for themselves and their children.
- this "sorting" process you describe is totally normal and a natural process. "Birds of a feather" is a very old and universal adage, but what types of birds and how they differ is dependent on lots of variables. In the not-so-distant past, this was totally divided along color, ethnicity and other tangible differences. However, in last 40 years or so, this has shifted considerably to "values" and financial oriented criteria instead of genetics. As a small but rapidly growing cohort of blacks and other minorities have gained educationally and financially, they have been accepted in the suburbs without incident, because frankly, the vast majority of whites only care that you share their values, not their melanin content. For most of us, content of character is now an accepted value.
- the democrat party has gone out of its way to foster dependency in minorities for many decades. Paying someone not to work hard to improve their own lot in life is guaranteed to increase the number of those who would rather not work hard, ditto subsidizing single motherhood. This is axiomatic. These dependent people of all colors gravitate together in the urban centers, where public services are more readily available.
Here is a site with very interesting maps of ALL the counties in the US that shows the concentration of red/blue sectors to be not so much by state as by population density. Even liberal states have large red areas outside the urban centers, and heavily red states have blue areas in the larger cities.
http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/
For many of us on the right, it really is too bad that Obama doesn't actually believe or live his own "post-racial" speeches, which are for election campaign consumption only. By devoting himself to the principles of Saul Alinsky, he has proven he believes that racial and class divisions are to be exacerbated as a means to power. This election cycle could easily erupt into violent confrontations no matter who wins.
denise on October 10, 2008 at 08:17 AM
The only trend the first chart shows is that more people are getting BAs all the time. The political proportions haven't changed over the last 40 years.
The second chart, I believe, is explained by the Democrats losing Catholics.
The "new white flight" chart is about what I would have expected. And nothing surprising in the 4th chart.
I agree the last chart is the most interesting, although not surprising. Of course we measure ourselves against people around us. A 6'4" guard probably doesn't think of himself as so tall when he's hanging around the rest of the basketball team.
And I don't think the conclusion that "we have so segregated ourselves that the basic language to describe politics has different meanings in different places" is supported by the limited data shown. Wouldn't that conclusion require at least a measurement over time?
Jason on October 10, 2008 at 09:07 AM
The first two charts do seem to indicate a change between 1971 and 1980, which could be due to the fulmination of the culture wars during the 60's and 70's. However, only showing BA degress is going to bias the chart towards the Democrat counties. As another poster has mentioned, you need to include all bachelor degrees for that chart to be accurate.
The biggest variable I see in correlating polictical views is population density. Living in a city versus a small town requires a different set of social mores and values, which then colors one's perception on how the world works, and consquently one's political outlook.
Park Slope Pubby on October 10, 2008 at 09:55 AM
Peg, you could be me. I live in the heart of blue country, Park Slope Brooklyn. I have found a few other conservatives, but we are all deeply in the closet, or we wouldn't be able to function.
I often think about moving. It is unpleasant to be around people who say mean horrible things about Bush, McCain, Palin, the Republicans etc., all the time. The easy assumption (in blue neighborhoods) is a) that everybody is ideologically the same and b) that anybody who is not a liberal is evil. It is painful for me.
Madeline09 on October 10, 2008 at 01:37 PM
Where are the PhD's and graduate degrees? Where do we live and how do we vote?
Madeline09 on October 10, 2008 at 01:38 PM
Where are the PhD's and graduate degrees? Where do we live and how do we vote?
Boots on October 10, 2008 at 04:31 PM
Go Peg and Park Slope Pubby! I have more in common with the two of you than most of my neighbors in deep blue Cook County Illinois, ground zero of political corruption in the USA. Those of us who are conservative communicate almost in code, it would be funny except that career suicide could be the result of 'coming out'. I'm just amazed that people from around the country think anything good could come out of the sewer of Chicago politics.....between the influence of the mob, the unions (a subset of the mob), race hustlers, unrepentent terrorists, political nepotism, and the naked quest for power, this is a terrible place to live. The productive citizens are bearing greater burdens all the time to support the political and welfare classes.....we have the highest sales tax in the country, along with some of the highest property taxes, and a state income tax. Oh, and there were more murders in Chicago this summer than in Baghdad and the killings keep coming. If America wants CHANGE, they will certainly get it if they select Obama, but they should look at what they're getting.
Debbie on October 10, 2008 at 07:37 PM
Me, too Peg. And Slope Pubby. You 2 could be me. I live in Ojai, California where the majority of liberals assume that all of their neighbors are air-headed leftists just like them They freely blather on about hating Bush and hating Palin just because I have money but choose to walk and ride the bus, practice tai chi and shop at the street fair. Oh, no; when it comes to the safety of my country and my international human rights as a woman - I do not trust the puppet Barak Obama and the thousands of socialists who will come to Washington to manage his presidency for him. I want a tough, seasoned veteran protecting my country and me. I want McCain.