Cities may be majority Democratic, but as Republicans living in urban areas from New York to Los Angeles can attest, they’re not without ideological diversity.
Democrats and Republicans just tend to stick to their own little pockets.
“Almost every Democratic city has Republican enclaves, especially when you think about cities as more than just their downtowns,” reads a recent article in FiveThirtyEight, a website that focuses on opinion poll analysis.
While Democrats prefer highly dense areas, Republicans tend to look for elbow room.
“Even if you look within the same census tract or the same ZIP code or the same precinct, and even if you’re in a place like Manhattan, Republicans will search out the less-dense part to live in,” Steven Webster, a political scientist at Washington University, told the website.
Within the most polarized cities in the United States, Democrats and Republicans tend to occupy different sections of each metro area. The most politically segregated cities in the country, according to FiveThirtyEight, are all in the South: Jackson, Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Birmingham, Alabama; and Shreveport, Louisiana.
“An obvious trend jumps out when you look at the most politically segregated cities: They’re also the cities with some of the highest proportions of black residents,” the analysis notes.
FiveThirtyEight found a strong correlation between racial segregation and political segregation, particularly bolstered by the overwhelming percentage of black people who vote Democrat. But even in majority-white cities, polarization remains. Springfield, Missouri, for example, shows up as a red mass with a nucleus of blue.
The explanation for this persistent political polarization isn’t simple. It could be a case of self-sorting, or it could be that these “places shape people,” as Webster hypothesizes. Maybe something about density makes you a Democrat, and something about space makes you Republican. What’s clear is this: In big cities, political polarization is getting worse.
