Secular geographical polarization in the American South: The case of Texas, 1996–2010

Myers, Adam S.

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2012.09.002

Cited by 29 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…One clear defence of our approach is the pragmatic one that these are the data that exist and, as in so many studies of large population aggregates, researchers have little alternative but to accept the limitations of what is available: such research is necessarily constrained by what is possible. The smallest spatial units -the Counties (and County-equivalents) -are fixed and though it would certainly be very desirable to use smaller units, perhaps more akin to the districts and neighbourhoods that are used by individuals and households when making residential-location decisions -as in the localised studies by Kinsella et al (2015), Myers (2013), and Sussell (2013) -such data are not available on a national scale. In seeking to establish the existence of nation-wide patterns, therefore, data availability precludes the exploration of micro-scale patterns alongside those at the macro-and meso-scales undertaken here.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Spatial Polarization of Presidential Voting in the United States, 1992–2012: The “Big Sort” Revisited

Johnston

Manley

Jones

2016

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms Much has been written in recent years about the claimed polarisation of the US electorate, with substantial differences as to whether there has been greater spatial polarisation, at several geographical scales, over recent decades. To assess the veracity of those alternative views, a bespoke data set showing percentage support for the Democratic Party's presidential candidates at the County, State and Divisional scales has been analysed using a robust, statistically-based measure of polarisation/segregation. The ecological results provide clear and compelling evidence of a trend towards greater polarisation across the nine Census Divisions, across the 49 States within those Divisions, and across the 3077 Counties within the States -with strong evidence that the differences over time at the last of those scales are highly statistically significant. Within those general trends, polarisation has been greater in some States than others and also within some States more than othersidentifying additional geographies calling for further research.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They may well have been within-County polarisation in at least some Counties -probably mainly those in the country's metropolitan areas. Analysis of these requires finer-grained data than we have available, and which could not be obtained for all Counties, requiring separate analyses of different States (as in Myers, 2013). …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial Polarization of Presidential Voting in the United States, 1992–2012: The “Big Sort” Revisited

Johnston

Manley

Jones

2016

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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“…Within contemporary American political analysis, electoral geography and contextual analysis have experienced some resurgence (Bishop & Cushing, 2008;Gelman, 2008;Gimpel & Schuknecht, 2002McGhee & Krimm, 2009;Myers, 2013). This recent work revolves around the debate over geographic polarization and the sorting of politically like-minded individuals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Unmasking geographic polarization and clustering: A micro-scalar analysis of partisan voting behavior

Kinsella

McTague²,

Raleigh

2015

Applied Geography

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“…A strong case can be made for the inclusion of other scales, as in the micro-scale variations in Texas explored by Myers ( 2013 ) and in Cincinnati by Kinsella et al ( 2015 ), but such data are not available for a country-wide analysis.…”

Section: N O T E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lang and Pearson-Merkowitz ( 2015 ) assess trends using inferential statistics, but their parallel approach to the study of polarization to that adopted here does not-unlike Glaeser and Ward, 2005-deploy an index of polarization. Both Myers ( 2013 ) and Kinsella et al ( 2015 ) use single-scale inferential measures of spatial clustering to identify changing intensity of polarization.…”

Section: N O T E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

The Growing Spatial Polarization of Presidential Voting in the United States, 1992–2012: Myth or Reality?

Johnston

Jones

Manley

2016

APSC

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There has been considerable debate regarding a hypothesis that the American electorate has become spatially more polarized over recent decades. Using a new method for measuring polarization, this paper evaluates that hypothesis regarding voting for the Democratic party's presidential candidates at six elections since 1992, at three separate spatial scales. The fi ndings are unambiguous: polarization has increased substantially across the country's nine census divisions, across the 49 states within those divisions, and across the 3,077 counties within the states-with the most signifi cant change at the fi nest of those three scales. W riting in 2005, Glaeser and Ward addressedwhat they termed five myths regarding American political geography, of which the second was "the two parties [Republican and Democrat] are more spatially polarized than in the past" (Glaeser and Ward 2005 , 5). They claimed that "the number of states that can be considered 'safe' for either party has not been rising over time" and, using the well-established dissimilarity index for measuring spatial segregation, demonstrated that "county-level evidence shows that segregation by party is not signifi cantly increasing"-although they did identify a "slight upward trend" over the four Three years later, in a much-discussed book ( The Big Sort ), Bishop and Cushing ( 2008 ) argued that electoral polarization had indeed been taking place over the preceding three decades, as a result of sorting processes consequent upon major volumes of inter-region, inter-state and inter-community migration. Abrams and Fiorina ( 2012 ) published a major critique of The Big Sort , challenging both the conclusion that polarization had occurred and the processes-selective migration-that Bishop and Cushing claimed were the cause of that geographical outcome. Looking only at the fi rst part of that challenge-whether or not spatial polarization had occurred-Abrams and Fiorina rightly criticized Bishop and Cushing for relying on two arbitrary end-dates (especially the fi rst) to establish a trend. They also questioned the use of the binary division of the country into "landslide" and "non-landslide" counties as the elements of the portrayal; other indices suggested to them that counties were becoming "increasingly politically heterogeneous, not increasingly homogeneous" (Abrams and Fiorina 2012 , 205

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Secular geographical polarization in the American South: The case of Texas, 1996–2010

Cited by 29 publications

References 18 publications

Spatial Polarization of Presidential Voting in the United States, 1992–2012: The “Big Sort” Revisited

Spatial Polarization of Presidential Voting in the United States, 1992–2012: The “Big Sort” Revisited

Unmasking geographic polarization and clustering: A micro-scalar analysis of partisan voting behavior

The Growing Spatial Polarization of Presidential Voting in the United States, 1992–2012: Myth or Reality?

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