Do You Live in a Political Bubble?

A map of San Francisco showing almost exlusively blue, Democratic dots. A map of Gillette, Wyo. showing almost exlusively red, Republican dots. A map of political segregation across the entire United States, with blue dots in cities and red dots in exurbs and rural areas.

How politically diverse is your neighborhood?

Enter your address to see the political party of the thousand voters closest to you.

You live in a Democratic bubble. Only 9 percent of your neighbors are Republicans.

Not everyone’s as politically isolated as you. There's a zip code five miles away with a roughly equal mix of Democrats and Republicans.

The film critic Pauline Kael once said that she lived in a “rather special world” because she only knew one person who voted for Richard Nixon. People in the Bay Area, the country’s most Democratic metropolitan enclave, may have felt similarly after Donald Trump won in 2016.

Residents of Gillette, Wyo., where about nine out of 10 voters are Republicans, might have been equally shocked by President Biden’s victory.

Republicans and Democrats are increasingly alienated from each other, rhetorically and geographically. How did we end up with such a segregated political landscape?

More than half of Republicans believe that last year’s election was stolen from Donald Trump. Rather than reject claims of election fraud, Republican lawmakers have used the premise that the election was stolen to justify restrictions on voting.

Mr. Trump most likely deserves much of the blame for the widespread belief among Republicans that the election was illegitimate. But there’s another reason so many Republicans might not believe that Joe Biden won: They don’t live near people who voted for him.

Surveys have shown that Americans’ animosity toward the opposing political party is higher than it has been in decades. At the same time, we’ve found that geographic political segregation has increased over the past 10 years. Could the two trends be connected?

“It’s a lot easier to demonize people on the other end of the political spectrum if you don’t personally know many of them,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. “That’s not a healthy situation for the country.”

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 used that data to create the maps here.

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.

represents one out of 100 Democrats

Each

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25

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75

100% of neighbors

are Republicans

38% of Democrats live in a bubble

represents one out of 100 Republicans

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100% of neighbors

are Democrats

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25

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75

19% of Republicans live in a bubble

Each

represents one out of 100 Democrats

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25

50

75

100% of neighbors

are Republicans

38% of Democrats

live in a bubble

Each

represents one out of 100 Republicans

100% of neighbors

are Democrats

75

50

25

0

19% of Republicans

live in a bubble

This year’s violence at the Capitol is a frightening harbinger of the future of American democracy if our political parties grow more estranged. Is it too late to pop our political bubbles?

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.

Our data reveals the racial and political segregation that exists even within cities. In Mobile, Ala., for example, Black Democrats live along the water, while white Republicans are bunched up farther inland. This division has existed for more than a century, in part because of the government’s racist housing policies.

White

Republicans

Mobile

Many Black neighborhoods

were deemed “hazardous” by the government in 1937.

White

Republicans

Mobile

Many Black neighborhoods

in Mobile were deemed

“hazardous” by the

government in 1937.

White

Republicans

Mobile

Many Black neighborhoods

in Mobile were deemed

“hazardous” by the

government in 1937.

In 1937, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation made a map of Mobile for the real estate industry to use when assessing an area’s risk level. Across the board, Mobile’s Black neighborhoods were shaded in red and rated as “hazardous,” making it more difficult for residents to get loans or build enough wealth through homeownership to move elsewhere.

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.

But even if racial segregation disappeared overnight, there’s evidence to suggest that people would still be sorted into red or blue communities.

Take Cedar Grove, N.J., and its neighbor to the east, Upper Montclair. About four out of five residents in both areas identify as white.

Politically, though, the two New Jersey suburbs are worlds apart. Last year, Donald Trump won Cedar Grove by a margin of seven percentage points. In Montclair, President Biden won by 78 percentage points.

Cedar Grove

Upper

Montclair

Montclair

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Cedar Grove

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Montclair

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Cedar Grove

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While Cedar Grove and Upper Montclair are predominantly white, they differ in key ways that most likely correlate with their politics. The median household income in Upper Montclair is almost twice that of Cedar Grove’s. There’s a cultural difference as well, as Montclair is home to a sizable contingent of journalists who work in Manhattan.

“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.

If Mr. Biden is interested in a return to comity between Democrats and Republicans, he stands little chance of undoing the decades-in-the-making constellation of who we vote for and whether we want to live near a Whole Foods or Cracker Barrel.

But the president can make it easier for people of color to move to the suburbs, in part by reforming discriminatory zoning policies. And he has good reason to make integration a priority: Democrats’ geographic isolation has cost the party political power.

Because Democrats are clumped together in cities, Republicans have been able to redraw congressional district boundaries so that, in some states, the share of House seats that Democrats control is much smaller than Democrats’ overall share of votes.

Take Ohio, where Mr. Biden won 45 percent of the vote but Democrats only control four of the state’s 16 congressional seats. The state’s 11th Congressional District, a Democratic stronghold that includes much of Cleveland, is a case study in how political segregation has led to disproportionate representation.

During the 2011 redistricting process, Republicans extended the district’s boundaries to include the city of Akron, another Democratic bastion.

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Cleveland

Ohio’s 11th district

Akron

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Cleveland

Ohio’s 11th district

Akron

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Ohio’s 11th district

Akron

Republicans were able to lasso most of northeastern Ohio’s Democratic voters into a single district because those voters were clustered together in cities. By doing so, Republicans removed Democratic voters from nearby districts, making it more likely that their own party would win those seats.

As states begin the redistricting process this year, Democratic leaders will be focused on striking down unfair boundaries drawn by Republican legislatures. Hours after the Census Bureau released state apportionment numbers last week, a Democratic redistricting group filed lawsuits to throw out maps in Louisiana, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

But for a more durable solution, President Biden should dismantle zoning laws that have kept Democrats and Republicans apart in the first place.

Middle-income Democrats who can’t afford a single-family home should still be able to raise their children in a duplex with a front yard. And young, lower-income Republicans shouldn’t be priced out of the cultural amenities that city life provides.

By making it easier for Democrats and Republicans to live side by side, President Biden might also restore some of our trust in one another. Our democracy only stands to benefit.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the location of Ohio's 11th Congressional District. It is in northeastern Ohio, not northwestern Ohio. An earlier version of an interactive element with this article misstated a voter registration requirement in some states. When registering to vote, residents of some states may provide a political party affiliation; they are not required to provide an affiliation. Also, Maryland residents who register to vote may provide a party affiliation.