How Politically Segregated Is Your City?

[brooklynite]

FiveThirtyEight

We’ve heard it over and over: Democratic candidates win cities. Researchers have tracked the way Democrats have dominated in cities since the ’90s. Politicians bring up America’s deep-blue cities constantly, including in stump speeches and in every debate over the Electoral College. Even FiveThirtyEight couldn’t resist joining in: In December, Galen Druke and I showed how America’s cities and tightly packed suburbs shifted toward Democrats in the most recent midterm election. The more densely populated the place, the more Democratic the voters.

But just because Republicans aren’t winning in cities doesn’t mean that no Republicans live there. Much has been made of the country’s urban-rural political divide, but almost every Democratic city has Republican enclaves, especially when you think about cities as more than just their downtowns. It’s a sign of our polarized times that these Republicans aren’t evenly distributed across the city, of course. But it’s also a sign of how centuries of American history have shaped and continue to shape where we live — and who our neighbors are.

But before we get to the sociology, let’s dig in to the geography. What did the political landscape of the city1 closest to you look like in 2016?



You may notice that the map includes areas that you don’t consider urban. Take it up with the Census Bureau. The agency defines urbanized areas based on population density and how the land is used, and it has been adapting that definition for over 100 years as Americans’ settlement patterns have changed. Part of that process has been accounting for growing levels of urban sprawl and the increasing fuzziness of the lines between suburban and rural areas.

When you expand the definition of urban areas beyond their downtown areas, cities start to look less Democratic and less densely populated. In more than half of the country’s 153 biggest urban areas, Democrats got between 40 and 60 percent of the 2016 two-party vote share2 — the share of votes that went to one of the two major parties, ignoring third-party votes and write-in candidates. Many of those urban areas aren’t small, tightly packed areas like Manhattan but sprawling, low-density regions like Phoenix, say, or Jacksonville, Florida.

[hlthe2b]

1. As much as Denver is, all one has to do is look up Front Range CO--Ft Collins, Boulder solidly blue

while East of I-25 (Weld County, Greeley, Erie, and all that plains) solid red.

No surprises there but it is impressive mapped out.