Bursting The Bubble: What The New York Times Misses with its Political Polarization Piece

From a Monday article from the Paper Of Record ™: 

Earlier this year, we published a study that measured how politically isolated Democrats and Republicans have become. Starting with a dataset containing the address of nearly every registered voter in the United States, we estimated each voter’s political affiliation based on which party the voter registered with, demographics and election results...

...We measured political isolation by looking at each voter’s thousand closest neighbors. For about one in five Republicans, and two in five Democrats, less than a quarter of their neighbors belong to the opposite political party...

...In many places, political segregation overlaps with racial segregation. People of color, who tend to identify as Democrats, live in densely populated urban communities. Republicans, who are mostly white, are spread out across exurbs and rural areas...

Today, redlining lives on under the guise of single-family zoning laws. By banning multifamily housing units, many communities have essentially locked out people of color who have less wealth and can’t afford single-family homes’ higher down payments...


...“People aren’t choosing to live near neighbors who share their party affiliation,” said Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University. “They’re segregating based on lifestyle choices.”

The alignment of lifestyle and politics reflects the sorting of Democrats and Republicans by income and education, in addition to race. While members of both parties want to live in neighborhoods with good schools and low crime, they disagree about the importance of certain religious and cultural amenities.

Democrats, surveys have shown, are more likely than Republicans to prioritize walkable neighborhoods with good public transit. Republicans, on the other hand, prize neighborhoods with more Christians and larger houses.

Giving credit where credit is due, the opinion piece does accurately identify some of the reasons for the country's continued political polarization, chief among them the racist housing policies that have prevented integration throughout our nation's history. It also touches upon lifestyle choices that may impact someone's residence including schools, crime rate, public transportation, and accessibility to religious institutions. The urban/rural divide is also real with Democrats concentrating in larger cities and Republicans more likely to reside in the countryside. As a whole, the article does an adequate job in laying out some surface-level reasons as to how and why people settle where they do. 

But there's more to the story. 

What the New York Times article misses is the generational transition that now drives modern-day American settlement. In particular, there is no real discussion about the movement of younger generations away from the place of their birth. While the Baby Boomers largely settled in the community in which they grew up, millennials and Generation Z-ers with financial stability are much more likely to settle elsewhere. This happens as more and more of us move away to college and then reach a point where our initial job applications cast a wide, multistate net. At age 22 without family or crushing debt, many millennials and Generation Z-ers either stuck around in the state in which they graduated college, went on to pursue advanced degrees, or kept their options open as to where they would begin their career in the workforce. It would be that first job that would dictate their first move. 

And it was for these younger generations where there was an appeal with the country's more urban areas because that, at least initially, was where the jobs were. For myself as an education major, I had two job offers: one in the Inner Banks region of North Carolina with a town of 5,000 people and a second in a city in the Triad region of the state with a population of 250,000. For me, the decision was a no-brainer. In the city, there were bars, restaurants, art and sporting venues, multiple malls and cinemas, as well as being within 90 minutes from 3 other major cities. One can also not understate the importance of having a social network when you begin your first job and I was grateful to have two friends that I knew in the area who were looking to add a third roommate in their housing search. Being in the city, it was not simply a matter of if we'd find housing but which housing option would best fit our budget. Having that built-in support system was the ultimate factor in my decision. 

At that time, my personal politics were not a consideration of where I ended up living. North Carolina was a swing state that actually went for Barack Obama in 2008 but I was not involved in the campaign in any capacity. When I left my first teaching job two years later what brought me to the West Coast was not the country's solid blue politics but rather the beautiful Southern California weather and the opportunity to make twice as much with my teaching salary. Of course, I quickly found out you pay for the weather through the cost of living but even then, I felt different than I did in North Carolina. I actually felt valued as a teacher. There was no stigma attached to you joining a teacher's union, in fact, it was encouraged. Teachers were paid well because it was not only seen as a noble profession but it was prioritized by state and local government. It was there in my mid-20's that I finally made the connection between liberal and conservative areas and what the impact was on an average Joe like me. 

And so, from that point on I knew that a region's politics would be something I would consider before deciding on a move. It was not an issue when I moved from San Diego to Sacramento. But as the end of 2015 drew near and I began considering my next move, I knew it would be election-related. I knew that if I were geographically flexible then the national campaign would be much more likely to hire me. I also knew that swing states would be a priority to I stressed that I would go wherever I was needed: Ohio, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Florida. I ended up in Florida where its 29 electoral votes were seen as a critical battleground locale. Hillary Clinton didn't necessarily need to win Florida but if she did, it was lights out for Donald Trump. At least, that was the prevailing thinking at the time. My being sent there with the first large patch of field organizers demonstrated just how important the state's politics would be and the fact that roughly 500 field organizers came from throughout the country showed the millennial commitment to the cause. Throughout 2016, thousands of millennials moved across the country for five months simply because they knew how important that a state's local politics would become. 

Of course, we were people with means. It takes a special kind of financial security to uproot yourself and live in a stranger's guest room for 5 months. But it has to be acknowledged that today the average person moves 12 times throughout her or his lifetime. Sometimes it's for a job. Other times it's for school. There are those that return home to take care of an ailing parent. There are others who simply upgrade from one apartment to another down the block. There are married couples that suddenly need a house and a yard for their expanding family. Whatever the case may be, these younger generations simply have more options in urban as opposed to rural settings. From childcare to public schools to city parks to travel sports teams, new parents are drawn to areas with these types of options. Combining that influx with historical segregation and it becomes obvious how and why we've arrived at the place where we're at. 

Americans have always been drawn to opportunity. From the California gold rush to the theft of Native American land to the Oakies and Arkies headed west during the Great Depression to the Great Migration, people with even limited means have searched for something better. Today is simply the latest iteration of these historic trends. We recently saw in Georgia how an influx of new residents to the suburbs around Atlanta provided enough new Democratic voters to win Joe Biden the state and to elect Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff to the United States Senate. These voters willingly moved to a red state not because of the state's politics but for access to all the amenities that Metro Atlanta had to offer. It just so happened that they landed in the state at exactly the time when Stacey Abrams was organizing the hell out of it and with her leaders of color was able to register and activate nearly 800,000 previously untapped voters. This alone should prove that a region's politics aren't the sole reason that people move to a new location. 

In the end, our current political polarization boils down to one thing: who you know. Those in urban areas are likely to have a diverse peer group and social network. It's hard to join a political party that wants to control your female friends' reproductive health, your Muslim friends' faith, and wants to take away your own personal health care. Committing yourself to a rural area with limited resources, underfunded schools, and an abundance of open carry weapons is a bridge too far for many new parents. But moving to that city, where you know another couple for game nights, where you have a cousin who can babysit, where you can take a cab downtown to catch a show with coworkers, that has appeal. That is a huge draw for younger generations. You don't move to a place specifically for its politics but you do move to a place for the policies that the politics have put into place. In that way, Democratically-led urban areas will always draw people in and they will always be appealing to the latest generation.

And that appeal is unlikely to cease any time soon.