For Politico, journalist Michael Kruse interviews journalist/author Bill Bishop. In 2008, Bishop authored The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded Americans Is Tearing Us Apart.
The interview’s aim - to determine what additional insights have occurred to Bishop in the intervening 14 years. Some key insights:
In 1976, 26.8 percent of voters lived in “landslide” counties — counties, that is, in which the winner in the presidential election won by more than 20 percent. In 1996, it was 42.1, and by 2004, it was nearing half.
But that was 18 years ago, what about now?
By 2016 it was 60 percent. Rhodes Cook looked at super-sorted counties — that gave 80 percent or more of its two-party presidential vote (to one candidate) — and found that 20 percent of the nation’s counties gave 80 percent.
We’re sorting in all kinds of ways, so it’s not primarily political — we see it in politics because we can measure it that way. (snip) The underlying engine of all this is identity and expression. It’s who I am.
People just know when they get to the place where they’re around people who are like themselves. (snip) All this is about lifestyle and about identity — and, oh, every four years, it’s about politics.
A bunch of European sociologists describe this breakdown of community and how the individual has become the artist of his own or her own life and is given this daily task of creating a self. And so politics now plays that role. People use politics to create identity.
Bishop concludes in 2016 Trump didn’t invent or cause “sorted identity,” he merely recognized its existence and took full advantage of it. In 2020, Biden may have benefitted from it even more.
The interesting thing about the guy who looked at the 80-percent counties: Most of the counties were Trump counties. But Biden got more votes out of 80-percent counties than Trump got out of 80-percent counties.
That makes sense, high-population-density counties are more apt to vote Democrat, low-density or rural counties tend to vote Republican, but have far fewer voters. It is a good interview, worth your time to read.
