Over the past few years we've all heard about "Red" and "Blue" America. Pundits like David Brooks have written about how the two Americas are drifting apart through residential segregation in the real world or reading their own ideological media in the cyberworld. But over the past six months I've been involved in some political volunteer work relating to a local issue and I've seen voter lists with party registration, and I was struck by the number of Democrats and Republicans who lived in the same household! Husbands and wives, parents and children, and so on. There has always been a large literature on interfaith and interracial families, but have there been studies on the number of interpolitical families? We know that whether you have a gay family member or friend is a strong predictor of a more tolerant outlook toward homosexuals, how much does daily interaction with the political Other mitigate partisanship?
Update: This is the source of the map.
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Razib:
I am afraid that I haven't seen this map before. What is the source and how was it constructed? I feel like it could be a district map representing majority registered R's vs D's, but I hope not. Obviously the "blue" areas represent a lot of population, but on a square footage basis that map is scary! Especialy after the last seven years...
We were one of those "purple" households for a while, but Bush has cured that. Of course, in NH, the plurality is now what we called undeclared, which means when the primary comes, you can chose which ballot to take. Then you have to visit the supervisors of the checklist again, and reregister as undeclared, or you are kept on the rolls as whatever party you took a ballot for.
My husband went from voting Republican to running for our state legislature as a Democrat last year!
It is pretty hard to figure out what something like the map means, because you may have had some changes in registration in the past couple months or even years, depending on how old the data is, and the rules about how you register are different in every state. Elections are run by the states.
I think the spectrum is red, white, and blue. The red are the angry people, the blue are the sad people, and the white are simply scared.
"What is the source and how was it constructed? I feel like it could be a district map representing majority registered R's vs D's, but I hope not."
"It is pretty hard to figure out what something like the map means, because you may have had some changes in registration in the past couple months or even years, depending on how old the data is, and the rules about how you register are different in every state"
Click through, people, before pondering too hard about registration rules or dates. The map is based on the 2004 election results, broken down by county.
I now notice that the link is listed as an update and may not have been there for the previous commenters.
See Alford & Hibbing (2006) for how political orientation predicts mate choice. As orientation is heritable [1], it may makes cross-political families "odd couples"!
Alford, John. and Hibbing, John. The Politics of Mate Choice Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Jan 05, 2006.
[1] http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&ai…
Bottom line for all of the democrates is voter turnout. There are truly many more democrates in this country than republicans but like the national average only a few turn up when it's time to cast their ballot. We republicans are not far behind though.
So the real answer is voters could care less when it comes to actually casting their vote. I personally have to hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils many times but I'm truly an American Citizen and that requires that I cast my vote.
Hey here's a novel thought.... lets get some real people to run for office again.
Could what you saw on those voter lists be related to where you live?
If your question is directed to me the answer might be yes. I have looked at voter turnout for several areas in rural nebraska and have found the ratio of actual voters to registered voters is less than 1 percent. An appaling statistic for sure. One small town with a population of roughly 5000 with only 2000 registered voters in a local election had a turn out of less than 50 voters.
There was a post at Volokh Conspiracy about this and how people exaggerate the extent to which it would make things difficult.