How important is the Red vs. Blue divide in American politics? Hamilton College James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government Philip Klinkner contends that many pundits and journalists have needlessly hyped the idea that Americans are segregating along political lines.
The Red vs. Blue division that the media reported following the 2000 Elections is largely fiction according to Klinkner's study, "Red and Blue Scare: The Continuing Diversity of the American Electoral Landscape" published in the current issue of The Forum: Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics.
According to Klinkner, "The red and blue maps give you the mistaken impression of geographic schism in American politics--that all Democrats live in one area and all Republicans live in another. In fact, there is quite a lot of mixing of Democrats and Republicans over the electoral landscape."
Klinkner points out that most Americans live in "purple" areas."The great majority of Americans live in a county where neither party wins in a landslide and where both parties have managed to win at least one presidential election in the last 16 years."
Recent reports also claim that voters "are less likely to live near someone with a different political point of view" and are more likely to become "more extreme in their thinking." Despite this coverage in the media, there is little evidence to suggest that the U.S. is becoming increasingly segregated along political lines. In fact, says Klinkner, "The average Democrat and the average Republican lives in a county that is split nearly 50-50." Klinkner adds that levels of segregation between Democrats and Republicans are about half that for blacks and whites or Catholics and non-Catholics.
The biggest mistake of those who tout the Red vs. Blue divide, Klinkner adds, is that "they assume that these trends will go on forever and that the Red areas will inevitably become redder and the Blue areas will inevitably become bluer." But as the article points out, there's no historical or contemporary evidence for such an assumption. "If this were true, the Solid South would be more solid than ever. Indeed, the United States would have long ago divided permanently into two separate and exclusive political camps." In recent presidential races, the article shows that compared to other counties, Bill Clinton's best counties in 1996 were actually less strong for Al Gore in 2000 and Bob Dole's best counties were a bit worse for George W. Bush.
While the American electoral landscape continues to be diverse, Klinkner hints that the real problem might not be the political segregation of the American population but the increasing partisanship of the urban areas where many pundits and journalists live.
The article is based upon an analysis of regional, state, and county voting data from 1840 to 2000.
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Klinkner is the author of numerous books and articles on American politics, including "The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees," 1956-1993 (Yale University Press, 1994) and "Midterm: The 1994 Elections in Perspective" (Westview Press, 1996). Most recently, he co-authored "The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of America's Commitment to Racial Equality" (University of Chicago Press, 1999), which received the 2000 Horace Mann Bond Book Award from Harvard University's Afro-American Studies Department and W.E.B DuBois Institute. Klinkner regularly updates his blog http://polysigh.blogspot.com/ to provide commentary on current topics.
Contact: Philip Klinkner, pklinkne@hamilton.edu; w) 315-859-4344 h) 792-9881
