Almost half of Americans now live in a "landslide county," a county where one or the other presidential candidate won by at least 20 percentage points in the 2008 election. That is up from merely a quarter in 1976 and about a third in 1992.
Why this is happening is fascinating stuff. You can argue that it is partly a fallout of geographical racial sorting. People tend to live in segregated neighborhoods and race is related to voting. The article notes:
Nationwide, Democrats have not won a majority of white votes in a presidential election since 1964.
The author prefers another view, that we choose where we live based on lifestyle, and lifestyle in turn determines how we vote.
Political polarization, according to this explanation, is a consumer phenomenon. Lifestyle choices...determine political loyalties as voters search for candidates who feel like "one of us."
Whatever you think is causing the phenomenon, it is darned interesting reading for political mavens.
