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The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart

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Now that Bill Clinton is using Bill Bishop's book "The Big Sort" as the basis for his current speeches, I should finally post a review. I read this book as soon as it was published and liked it, but not being one who regularly picks up social science books on political culture I procrastinated. Now it's time, and here are a few observations.

"The Big Sort" refers to the fact that lifestyle choices are leading like-minded folks to live together in communities where they feel comfortable and perhaps unchallenged. That has significant ramifications for our country's political and social development. To quote the book, "The lesson for politics and culture is pretty clear. It doesn't matter if you're a frat boy, a French high school student, a petty criminal, or a federal appeals court judge. Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward extremes."

The fact that Republican strategists understood this well before the Democrats is detailed in a discussion with Matthew Dowd, George Bush's pollster in the 2000 election and chief strategist for the Bush campaign in 2004. According to Bishop's account, Dowd understood that "American communities were 'becoming very homogeneous'. He believed that to a large degree, this clustering was defensive, the general reaction to a society, a country, and a world that were largely beyond an individual's control or understanding. For generations, people had used their clubs, their trust in a national government, and long-established religious denominations to make sense of the world. But those old institutions no longer provided a safe harbor. 'What I think has happened,' Dowd told me early in 2005, 'is the general anxiety the country feels is building. We're no longer anchored'." Bishop decodes this further, saying "Unsurpassed prosperity had enriched Americans---and it had loosened long established social moorings. Americans were scrambling to find a secure place, to make a secure place...Most Americans have done that by seeking out(or perhaps gravitating toward)those who share their lifeworlds---made up of old, fundamental differences such as race, class, gender, and age, but also, now more than ever, personal tastes, beliefs, styles, opinions, and values."

"The Big Sort" identifies 1965 as the beginning of the major shift in American political and social demographics. The result today, in a political sense, is underscored by the findings of Bishop and his sociologist/demographer contributor Robert Cushing. Statistics showed that in the 1976 presidential election only 20% or Americans lived in counties that voted for one candidate or the other by more than a 20% margin. By 2004, 48% of America's counties were this type of landslide county with 20% plus margins for one of the candidates. Big change.

Bishop's book manages to deal with this subject comprehensively while being fluidly written, informative, insightful, and even entertaining. Somehow he pulls off the trick of letting us know of his participation in the "clustering" by living in a liberal Austin neighborhood where he fits in, without upsetting the balanced analytical perspective of the book. At least that's my take on it. It's an important book that seems to be gaining deserved recognition as we move toward November 4.

This book is intriguing, convincing, also sad and scary for anybody who hopes to be living in a democracy.

After reading it, I look around and see the uniformity (amid the Benetton ethnic mix and DIY style-diversity) of my own social networks in the city. All I did was exercise "free" choice about where to live. I've wound up in this cool 'hood, so cool I have to whisper that I voted for Clinton, not Obama.

Bishop and Cushing have done mighty work. They track back the origins of the mega-churches (would you believe in India and Korea?) and pull together decades of bizarre social psychology research. They prove what's happened by following the votes, the money, and the feet of Americans on the move.

Stories are good reading -- the comic book "tribe" in Portland, emergent church kids, moderates squeezed out of Congress, the textbook wars of the 1960s in particular blew my mind. Anybody who thinks Karl Rove masterminded the state we're in is going to be stunned. We're living a new segregationist era, and it goes a whole lot deeper than skin.

The central thesis of this book, that this country's population is segregating itself into political and life-style enclaves, is interesting and important, with a variety of consequential social and political implications. Bishop provides convincing statistical documentation to support his contention.
His argument would have made a first rate article. Unfortunately, he has turned it into a full length book by padding it with a lot of familiar and often barely relevant material from earlier academic studies and news articles.
"The Big Sort" is nonetheless a worthwhile read, even if much of it can be skipped or skimmed without losing the main thrust of its argument.

The authors' thesis is intriguing. U.S. counties are becoming increasingly homogenous in their lifestyle and politics. As a result, they are becoming polarized. The authors state this phenomenon is more pronounced for Republican counties. They are concerned that our society has become increasingly fragmented with close by communities having radically different sets of values. The authors partly explain this clustering into homogenous communities over the past three decades resulting in polarizing differences between them.

Their main supporting observation is that the % of voters in Presidential election from counties with a 20 percentage point differential (in either direction) in close elections has steadily increased over the past 30 years (from 26.8% in 1976 to 48.3% in 2004). They also rely on Alan Abramowitz work who observed the same phenomenon at the State level. In 1976, the average Presidential election margin in the States was 8.9 percentage points. In 2004, it was 14.8 percentage points. But, it is unclear if the latter just picked two points. That's because when you look at the standard deviation of the Democrat's % at the State level minus the nation's Democrat's % for each Presidential election over the same period, you get pretty much trendless results. If polarization had really increased, the standard deviation as defined over the period should have increased.

The authors also observed that since the 70s, Democratic counties share of the college educated and foreign-born citizens has risen. Meanwhile, Republicans gained shares of the Church going and white population. This demographic shift explains why Republican counties have become more polarized as they are more religious, less ethnically diverse, and less moderate in their views.

The authors thesis is appealing. The rise of the religious right is common knowledge. Democrats, referred to as the rainbow coalition, being more ethnically diverse is well accepted too.

But, sometimes the authors contradict themselves. On page 50 they disclose a graph showing how counties have become increasingly more polarized in their Presidential voting; and it is clearly the Democratic counties that have become more so. This contradicts their narrative analysis. So, which one is correct? Their analysis or their graph?

Other leading social scientists completely contradict their theories. The latter suggest that to the contrary the U.S. population is not so polarized. And, that it is only the politicians that have become more so. Those are the themes presented by Morris Fiorina in Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (Great Questions in Politics Series). The authors actually do agree with Fiorina about the politicians as they convey a graph on pg. 247 showing the rapid decline of moderates in Congress from near 50% of the membership (either Senate or the House) in 1950 down to 10% currently. But, Fiorina and the authors reach diametrically opposite conclusion regarding the general population. How can that be? The authors show polarization mainly at the county voting level. Fiorina instead shows moderation at the State level, as he shows that the majority of the State in the 2000 election did have less than a 10% differential between Bush and Gore (I suspect the updated edition shows the same phenomenon in 2004 between Bush and Kerry). He also conveys that people's opinions between Blue and Red States are not that different even on very controversial topics such as abortion and homosexuality. To the authors credit, they addressed Fiorina's work. But, they dismissed it too quickly. They suggest Fiorina was looking for moderation by phrasing the questions ambiguously. On abortion Fiorina asked whether people were for or against abortion in different terms of pregnancies and in different situations (health of the mother at risk, rape, confirmed malformation of fetus, etc...). Meanwhile, the authors asked simply are you for or against abortion? And they got different results. But, I think Fiorina's work is more sophisticated as it uncovered the nuances of people's values much better. Additionally, Fiorina develops a political model indicating that the Presidential candidate who gets closer to the Center on both fiscal and social dimensions typically wins the election. Karl Rove proved the opposite in 2000 and 2004 by rallying the base. Meanwhile, the authors support Karl Rove strategy and suggests that given our polarized electorate you have to rally your base first and foremost. The current election between Obama and McCain may swing the pendulum again in Fiorina's favor.

Another leading pollster who is on Fiorina's side is Mark Penn. In his interesting book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes he indicates that the % of independent voters is steadily rising. Per studies from University of Michigan, the % of split-ticket voters (people who vote for a different party for President vs Congress) has increased by 42% since 1952.

Also counties presidential voting may have become more polarized because the candidates have become more polarized not the voters. In 1976, Ford and Carter was a far less contentious match than either Bush - Gore in 2000 or Bush - Kerry in 2004.

In terms of the sorting and clustering of communities economic implications, the authors work is simplistic vs the far more sophisticated and insightful work of Richard Florida in Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.

My fourteen-month-old daughter has a board book that tells the life story of Rosa Parks in under sixty words. Obviously, there are some gross omissions and stunning oversimplifications, but whatever--it's a board book. I'm just glad she's reading about Rosa Parks. And maybe when she's old enough to turn the pages without tearing them, she can tackle The Big Sort. The gross omissions and stunning oversimplifications will still be there, but at least she'll be reading about politics. And it does have a neat picture on the cover.

It's not that Bishop's main premise is misplaced. Indeed, if you live in the USA and have left the house anytime in, say, the past decade, then you've probably perceived Bishop's "big sort:" the steady division of the country along cultural and lifestyle lines. The book is a well-organized marshaling of prodigious statistical and anecdotal support for this what-else-is-new premise, with samples cut mostly from churches, restaurant franchises, and social scientists in fly-over America. Nor is Bishop totally lacking in thought-provoking insights. His contention that groups of like-minded individuals tend to become more extreme in their like-mindedness is well argued and not altogether obvious, and Bishop displays keen perception in noting similarities in the marketing of commercial products, religion, and ultimately political campaigns.

Bishop's problem, rather, is that he overreaches his evidence and has virtually no grasp of his historical context. Bishop writes as though the USA was once a harmonious land of brotherly neighbors standing in unshakable solidarity, whose occasional disagreements were nothing that couldn't be settled over a couple Budweisers and a handshake. Then out of nowhere fissures start to open in the mid-1960s, to then amplified in a nouveau "big sort." It might pass for board book history-- if you only count the white people.

Having announced that America was all like peas & carrots until 1965 fell from the sky, the balance of Bishop's text rings nostalgic for a return to those good `ole days, before political issues were anything to really get worked-up about, back when everyone just got along. As if. Bishop's big sort is happening, for sure, and its importance cannot be discounted. But his analysis is riddled with errors, and none bigger than a fictional point of origin. Sorting being nothing so new to America, Bishop really ought to brush up if he's going to write about politics. Maybe he can start by reading some board books.

I remember back in high school, I was talking to a teacher about his growing up in Pittsburgh in the twenties and thirtiesand how, back then, people seemed to live in communities. For example, his father working in the steel industry, as did a few other neighbours. The guy next door, however, was a doctor. Today you don't see that as much... That's because we live in class enclaves.

Bishop pinpoints 1965 as the epicenter. Myself, I'd place it at the end of World War II, when housing plans were popping up. Housing plans ensure that the residents living within the confines are, to a degree, very similar.

But enough with my ideas.

Bishops recognizes that the political division that the country is going through has a physical aspect as well, which is something I've not before considered. This is an important book that describes the further radicalisation of American politics. One must wonder what the ramifications will yeild a decade from now...

A fascinating book documenting how Americans are using their ability to move to "sort" themselves into homogeneous, same-thinking commmunities that rarely have to interact with others who think differently. The key is that this is not done purposefully, but rather in the simple choices one has in finding a place to live that seems comfortable for them.
The problems with this sorting is that these communities start to become echo chambers for their particular veiws, and that drives them to ever greater extremes, making discussion between different communities uncommon, and uncomfortable when it does have to occur.
Well researched, competently written, this book explores the many different ways this affect us all. On the negative side (only slightly) it seems like the material is stretched just a bit in order to make it book length. But it is fascinating and thought-provoking in any case.

It may take a journalist to write an important work on politics that can be understood and enjoyed by those without a PhD in political science. This is essential reading for those who want to understand where the rubber meets the road in American politics at the grassroots level. It is a penetrating analysis that is also thoughtful, thoroughly researched and very well-written.
With that said, an editor more concerned with selling books than with the weight of objective evidence may have insisted on the subtitle, "Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart." That is because James Madison wrote in 1787, "The latent causes of factions are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society." Bill Bishop brings this up to date 221 years later by describing how the adherents of those factions have chosen to live apart by segregating themselves into separate clusters of residential neighborhoods in cities across the country. He is far less persuasive in making a case that this is somehow tearing us apart any more today than it did in the atmosphere of bitter factionalism that existed in Madison's era.

I bought this book because I had become fascinated with what I had seen when studying the county by county results of recent presidential elections. My wife and I have been considering moving from our present location, and I was looking for a county within the states we're considering, where there was roughly a 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans. The relatively small number of such counties got me looking at the historical data more, and it appeared that we (as a nation) are segregating ourselves by politics at a rather substantial rate. Bill Bishop explores the history of how we got to our present situation, and offers a number of reasons for it, as well as showing the various aspects of human life in which we do tend to segregate ourselves. Bishop also displays a lot of reasons why this trend is likely to continue. It's not an especially uplifting book, but then, it never pretended to be. It's a good read for those who have an interest in the demographics and sociology of the people of the U.S. So much for a melting pot!

I've bought a few copies for my "Red" and "Blue" state friends to help steer our political discourse away from ideology and focus instead on problem solving and discussions on the current effectiveness of government management and oversite. Indeed my friends are nerds, opinionated nerds. This book helps clear the air of some the talk show rhetoric that slips in from time to time. I recommend it to political wonks and sociology lovers.