The Big Sort (44 page)

 

1.
The Age of Political Segregation

1. "Political Opinions Take a Violent Turn in Florida,"
Seattle Times,
October 29, 2004, p. A8.

2. Akilah Johnson, "Police: Man Beats Woman About Vote,"
South Florida Sun-Sentinel,
October 28, 2004, p. B5.

3. Lee Mueller, "Quarrel Between Friends Ends in Shooting in Floyd,"
Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader,
August 6, 2005, p. A1.

4. Claire Taylor, "Vandals Target Democrats' Office for Second Time,"
Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser,
September 17, 2004.

5.
Huntsville (AL) Times,
November 2, 2004.

6. Bill Bishop, "The Incredible Shrinking Middle Ground,"
Austin American-Statesman,
August 29, 2004, p. A1.

7. Rick Lyman, "In Exurbs, Life Framed by Hours Spent in the Car,"
New York Times,
December 18, 2006, p. 29.

8. "Political Parties and Partisanship: A Look at the American Electorate" (briefing, Brookings Institution/Princeton University, September 17, 2004), p. 17.

9. See Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal,
Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); see also Poole's website,
www.voteview.com
.

10. Alan Abramowitz, "Redistricting, Competition, and the Rise of Polarization in the U.S. House of Representatives" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 3, 2006).

11. Dana Milbank and David Broder, "Hopes for Civility in Washington Are Dashed,"
Washington Post,
January 18, 2004, p. A1.

12. Hamilton College political scientist Philip Klinkner has argued that today's segregation is, in the long stretch of things, nothing unusual. See his article "Red and Blue Scare: The Continuing Diversity of the American Political Landscape,"
Forum
2, no. 2 (2004). See also Edward Glaeser and Bryce Ward, "Myths and Realities of American Political Geography" (Harvard Institute of Economic Research Discussion Paper 2100, January 2006).

13. Morris P. Fiorina, with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope,
Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America,
2d ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2006), pp. xiii–xiv.

14. Ibid., pp. 21–22.

15. Morris P. Fiorina, with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope,
Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America
(New York: Pearson Longman, 2005), p. 5.

16. Jonathan Rauch, "Bipolar Disorder,"
Atlantic,
January/February 2005, p. 102–10.

17. Joe Klein, "America Divided? It's Only the Blabocrats,"
Time,
August 8, 2004,
http://www.time.com/time/election2004/columnist/klein/article/0,18471,678593,00.html
.

18. Robert Kuttner, "Red vs. Blue? Not True,"
Boston Globe,
August 10, 2005, P. A15.

19. William Beaman, "A Fractured America?"
Reader's Digest,
November 2005.

20. E. J. Dionne Jr., "Why the Culture War Is the Wrong War,"
Atlantic,
January/ February 2006, p. 131.

21. Alan I. Abramowitz and Kyle L. Sanders, "Is Polarization a Myth?" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, January 5, 2006).

22. Alan Abramowitz and Bill Bishop, "The Myth of the Middle,"
Washington Post,
March 1, 2007, p. A17. The data come from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which surveyed 24,000 people who voted in 2006.

23. Zachary Goldfarb, "How Many Wins Make Up a 'Wave'?"
Washington Post,
November 13, 2006; Rhodes Cook, "Democrats Made Gains in All Regions of the Country" (special to Pew Research Center, November 14, 2006).

24. Alan Abramowitz, Brad Alexander, and Matthew Gunning, "Don't Blame Redistricting for Uncompetitive Elections,"
PS. Political Science and Politics
39 (January 2006): 88. Also available at
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/article/php?id=AIA2005052601
.

25. Jeanne Cummings, "Redistricting: Home to Roost,"
Wall Street Journal,
November 10, 2006, p. A6.

26. Abramowitz, Alexander, and Gunning, "Don't Blame Redistricting," p. 88.

27. Bruce Oppenheimer, "Deep Red and Blue Congressional Districts," in
Congress Reconsidered,
ed. Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce Oppenheimer, 8th ed., pp. 135–57 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2005).

28. Bill Bradley, "A Party Inverted,"
New York Times,
March 30, 2005.

29. Lewis H. Lapham, "Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, a Brief History,"
Harper's Magazine,
September 2004.

30. Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga,
Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of Peo-ple-Powered Politics
(White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2006), pp. 26–27.

31. Mark Schmitt, "The Legend of the Powell Memo,"
American Prospect,
April 27, 2005,
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId= 9606
.

32. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge,
The Right Nation. Conservative Power in America
(New York: Penguin Press, 2004), pp. 77–78.

33. Schmitt, "The Legend of the Powell Memo."

34. James Piereson, "Investing in the Right Ideas,"
WSJ.com
Opinion Journal,
May 27, 2005,
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006723
.

35. Schmitt, "The Legend of the Powell Memo."

36. Abramowitz, Alexander, and Gunning, "Don't Blame Redistricting," p. 88.

37. Oppenheimer, "Deep Red and Blue Congressional Districts," pp. 152–53.

38. Gimpel was one of the first to see the growing geographic concentration of like-minded voters by community, writing about the phenomenon in James G. Gimpel and Jason E. Schuknecht,
Patchwork Nation. Sectionalism and Polttical Change in American Politics
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

39. John H. Fenton,
Midwest Politics
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), pp. 150–52.

40. Thomas Frank,
What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004).

41. Mark Blumenthal, "State of the Union Reaction,"
Pollster.com
, January 24, 2007,
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/state_of_the_union_reaction.php
.

 

2.
The Politics of Migration

1. David Myers, e-mail to author, 2004.

2. In this test, we simply measured the change in political segregation in the counties in each census region. We used the index of dissimilarity for this calculation.

3. Alan I. Abramowitz and Kyle L. Sanders, "Is Polarization a Myth?" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, January 5, 2006).

4. There were 19 surveys in this database and more than 31,000 interviews.

5. Scott Keeter of the Pew Research Center provided this analysis to the author. In one difference from Bob Cushing's analysis, Keeter slightly changed the dividing line for a strong partisan county. Instead of a io-point difference, Keeter designated "landslide" counties as those with 20-point margins. Just under half the voters in 2004 lived in one of these counties.

6. Phillip Longman, "The Liberal Baby Bust,"
USA Today,
March 14, 2006; David Brooks, "The New Red-Diaper Babies,"
New York Times,
December 7, 2004; Joel Kotkin and William Frey, "Parent Trap,"
New Repuhlic,
December 2, 2004,
http://www.joelkotkm.com/Politics/NR%20Parent_Trap.htm
.

7. Ronald Brownstein, "As Democrats Look West, Colorado Budges,"
Los Angeles Times,
September 28, 2006.

8. Bob Cushing used county-to-county migration data provided by the IRS to do this analysis.

 

3.
The Psychology of the Tribe

1. James Sterling Young,
The Washington Community
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), pp. 17–18, 42–43, 56. As with much of history, some find fault with Young's analysis. See Allan G. Bogue and Mark Paul Marlaire, "Of Mess and Men: The Boardinghouse and Congressional Voting, 1821–1842,
American Journal of Political Science
19, no. 2 (May 1975): 207–30.

2.
Ibid., pp. 76–77, 81–82.

3. Ibid., p. 98.

4. Ibid., p. 102.

5. Ibid., pp. 102–4.

6. Ibid., p. 100.

7. Ibid., p. 105.

8. Ibid., p. 96.

9. "Walgren Slammed in Opponent's Spots for Living in McLean,"
Roll Call,
November 5, 1990.

10. "The Polarization of American Politics: Myth or Reality" (transcript, Princeton University conference, panel 3, December 3–4, 2004),
http://www.princeton.edu/~csdp/events/polarization.htm
.

11. Mark Leibovich, "Taking Power, Sharing Cereal,"
New York Times,
January 18, 2007, p. Di. See also Johanna Neuman, "At This 'Animal House,' the Party Is Democratic,"
Los Angeles Times,
July 25, 2005.

12. Matt Stearns, "100 Block of D Street SE Embodies the Story of the GOP's Undoing," McClatchy Newspapers, November 16, 2006.

13. "The Polarization of American Politics."

14. Nelson W. Polsby,
How Congress Evolves: Social Bases of Institutional Change
(New York. Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 125–26.

15. "The Polarization of American Politics."

16. Norman Triplett, "The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition,"
American Journal of Psychology
9 (1897): 507–33. See also Michael A. Hogg and Joel Cooper, eds.,
The Sage Handbook of Social Psychology
(London: Sage, 2003), pp. 3–23.

17. Muzafer Sherif, "A Study of Some Social Factors in Perception,"
Archives of Psychology
187 (July 1935): 47.

18. Ibid., pp. 48–53.

19. Stanley Schachter, "Deviation, Rejection, and Communication, "
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
46 (1951): 190–207.

20. David Myers and Helmut Lamm, "The Group Polarization Phenomenon,"
Psychological Bulletin
83, no. 4 (1976): 602–3.

21. Serge Moscovici and Marisa Zavalloni, "The Group as a Polarizer of Attitudes,"
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1, no. 2 (1969): 125–35.

22. David G. Myers,
Social Psychology
(New York. McGraw-Hill Educational, 2004), pp. 308–24.

23. Cass R. Sunstein,
Why Societies Need Dissent
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 166–78; Cass R. Sunstein and David A. Schkade, "Judging by Where You Sit,"
New York Times,
June 11, 2003, p. A31.

24. Myers,
Social Psychology,
pp. 313–16.

25. Robert Baron, interview with author, 2004. See also R. Baron, S. I. Hoppe, C. F. Kao, B. Brunsman, B. Linneweh, and D. Rogers, "Social Corroboration and Opinion Extremity"
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
321 (1996): 537–60.

26. Galatians 1:13–14.

27. Michael Schudson,
The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life
(New York: Free Press, 1998), pp. 82–83.

28. Federalist No. 37,
The Federalist Papers,
ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York. Mentor, 1961), p. 231.

29. "Brutus," quoted in Sunstein,
Why Societies Need Dissent,
p. 146.

30. Alexander Hamilton, quoted in Colleen A. Sheehan, "Madison v. Hamilton: The Battle over Republicanism and the Role of Public Opinion,"
American Political Science Review
98 (2004): 411.

31. Sheehan, "Madison v. Hamilton," p. 418.

32. Sunstein,
Why Societies Need Dissent,
p. 161.

33. Schudson,
The Good Citizen,
pp. 83–85.

34. Roger Sherman, quoted in Sunstein,
Why Societies Need Dissent,
pp. 151–52.

35. Federalist No. 70,
The Federalist Papers,
ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1961), pp. 426–27.

36. Warren Miller, "One-Party Politics and the Voter,"
American Political Science Review
50, no. 3 (September 1956): 707–25.

37. David E. Campbell, "What You Do Depends on Where You Are: Community Heterogeneity and Participation" (paper prepared for the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 15, 2004). See also David Campbell,
Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

38. Robert Huckfeldt, Edward G. Carmines, Jeffery J. Mondak, and Carl Palmer, "Blue States, Red States, and the Problem of Polarization in the American Electorate" (paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, September 2005), p. 25.

39. James L. Gibson, "The Political Consequences of Intolerance: Cultural Conformity and Political Freedom,"
American Political Science Review
86, no. 2 (June 1992): 344.

40. Shanto Iyengar and Richard Morin, "Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence for a Political Litmus Test in Online News Readership,"
Washington Post,
May 3, 2006. The Pew Research Center found a similar polarization in news habits of Republicans and Democrats in 2004. See Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "News Audiences Increasingly Politicized: Online News Audience Larger, More Diverse," June 8, 2004.

41. Drew Westen, quoted in Michael Shermer, "The Political Brain,"
Scientific-American.com
,
June 26, 2006,
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=000CE155–1061–1493–906183414B7F0162
.

42. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet,
The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign
(New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1944), pp. 82, 89, 90–91.

43. Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush campaign in 2004, interview with author, 2005.

44. Susanna Schrobsdorff, "A More Liberal Electorate? Not Yet,"
MSNBC.com/Newsweek
, November 9, 2006,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15643639/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/
.