Spatial Polarization of Presidential Voting in the United States, 1992–2012: The “Big Sort” Revisited

Abstract

General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms Much has been written in recent years about the claimed polarisation of the US electorate, with substantial differences as to whether there has been greater spatial polarisation, at several geographical scales, over recent decades. To assess the veracity of those alternative views, a bespoke data set showing percentage support for the Democratic Party's presidential candidates at the County, State and Divisional scales has been analysed using a robust, statistically-based measure of polarisation/segregation. The ecological results provide clear and compelling evidence of a trend towards greater polarisation across the nine Census Divisions, across the 49 States within those Divisions, and across the 3077 Counties within the States -with strong evidence that the differences over time at the last of those scales are highly statistically significant. Within those general trends, polarisation has been greater in some States than others and also within some States more than othersidentifying additional geographies calling for further research.

MultiLevel Modeling of Space–Time Variations: Exploring Landslide Voting Patterns at United States Presidential Elections, 1992–2016

“…Several other authors have produced evidence to that effect, however, albeit only for case study areas rather than for the entire countrysee, for example, Kinsella, McTague, and Raleigh (2015), Myers (2013) and Sussell (2013). More recently, Johnston, Manley and Jones (2016) have produced clear evidence, using a multilevel model of segregation, that polarization increased over the period 1992-2012 at three spatial scales (see also Johnston, Jones and Manley [2018], which includes the 2016 election); Lang and Pearson-Merkowitz (2015) reached similar conclusions. Since 1992, the pattern of voting at presidential elections has become increasingly more polarized across the nine divisions deployed by the Bureau of the Census for much statistical presentation; additionally, it has become more polarized across the states within those divisions, as well as across the counties (or county-equivalents) within states.…”

Spatial scale and measuring segregation: illustrated by the formation of Chicago’s ghetto

“…Thus, for example, the 23 EDs shown as Q1 in the map for 1930 comprise the smallest number of EDs containing one-quarter of the total Black population -58,805 individuals -whereas the 35 shown as Q2 comprises the smallest number containing the next quarter. See Johnston et al 2016b. )…”

“…An alternative approach that separates out the intensity of segregation at a number of scales has recently been developed and applied to studies of contemporary ethnic patterns in London Johnston et al, 2016c), Auckland and Sydney (Johnston et al, 2016a), as well as in growing spatial polarisation in the partisanship of the US electorate (Johnston et al, 2016b). It is a modification of the well-developed multilevel modelling framework, and produces estimates of the level of segregation at each scale, net of its level at any higher scale within which the areal units deployed are nested -in this case EDs within wards.…”

The geographical polarization of the American electorate: a country of increasing electoral landslides?

“…The electoral geography may indeed be changing -indeed, an increasing number of studies of individual places have provided clear evidence of the type of polarization claimed by Bishop (for example, Kinsella et al, 2015;McDonald, 2011;and Myers, 2013) while statistical studies of national trends (e.g. Johnston et al, 2016Johnston et al, , 2018Lang and Pearson-Merkowitz, 2015) have provided strong evidence of growing spatial polarization in support for the two parties, at three separate spatial scales. Whether that polarization has resulted from sorting processes whereby movers within the United States are increasingly choosing to live among people with similar political views to their own remains open to question: see, for example, Cho et al (2013Cho et al ( , 2018 and Gimpel and Hui (2015), but also Mummolo and Nall (2017).…”

“…We are grateful are grateful to Clark Archer, Fred Shelley and Bob Watrell for allowing us to use the countyscale data set they compiled for presidential elections between 1992 and 2016 in this research (seeJohnston et al, 2016). 5 These maps were created using a carefully-constructed data set by Clark Archer, Fred Shelley and Bob Watrel for presidential elections between 1992 and 2016 in this research; we are grateful to them for sharing it with us.…”