The Big Sort Read Online Free Page A

is my generation's creation, so it is first ours to understand and then, perhaps, to change.

Part I
THE POWER OF PLACE

2. THE POLITICS OF MIGRATION
    O PPOSITES DON'T ATTRACT. Psychologists know that people seek out others like themselves for marriage and friendship. That the same phenomenon could be taking place between people and communities isn't all that surprising. "Mobility enables the sociological equivalent of assortative mating,'" explained social psychologist David Myers. Assortative mating—the tendency of similar types to pair up—has been studied as a cause of poverty and autism. But Myers was making a different point. Our wealth, education, and ability to move have allowed us to seek "those places and people that are comfortably akin to ourselves." 1
    The United States was shaped by migration. Explorers found their way on foot through the Cumberland Gap. Pioneers pushed west in wagon trains. Blacks left the dismal economy and deadly culture of the cotton South in the "great migration" of the first half of the twentieth century. Cubans fled to Florida after the overthrow of Batista in 1959. These mass displacements weren't what Myers was describing. He was identifying a different kind of movement, a migration of self-selection. The Big Sort included an element of personal discretion. People still moved to find good jobs, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods. But an expanding economy, rising levels of education, and the breakdown of older social groupings had injected more personal choice into the selection of where to move and how to live. Amenities became more important as people sought out a particular kind of church or a special music or art scene. (For instance, Austin is brimming with baby boomers who moved here for the cosmic cowboy sound.) Americans could move to places that reinforced their identities, where they could find comfort among others like themselves. These weren't political choices, but they had political consequences.
Sorting the Evidence
    After Bob Cushing and I discovered that Americans were segregating politically, we searched for corroborating evidence that this phenomenon was linked to larger social movements. We hoped not only to confirm the sorting we saw in elections but also to explore the nuances of what appeared to be a massive social and political reconfiguration. So we gathered what evidence was available and devised three tests of the Big Sort's influence. The first measured the voting patterns of communities over a number of presidential elections. If communities were collecting overwhelming numbers from one party or the other, majorities within communities should grow. The power of "assortative migration" would attract more Democrats to Democratic counties and more Republicans to Republican counties. By the same token, as Democrats left heavily Republican areas, those places would become even more Republican and vice versa. To be significant, this couldn't be a regional phenomenon. The sorting should be more than just the South switching from solidly Democratic to staunchly Republican. The whole nation ought to be undergoing the same kind of political separation.
    Our second test would calculate the power of place. We wanted to see if geography trumped the measures normally used to designate political leanings. The most talked-about pattern of the past two presidential elections has been the overwhelming support churchgoers gave to the Republican candidate. If geography mattered, we should see a difference in churchgoers depending on the political cast of their home counties. Liberal churchgoers would live in one place and conservative churchgoers in another. If place had a special effect on people's politics, all union members wouldn't be the same either. Union members in Republican counties would have different beliefs from those in Democratic counties.
    Finally, if sorting into like-minded communities had been taking place since the 1970s, we figured that we