Voter polarization

An interesting article in the Atlantic examines how polarized American voters have become - by county.  Pollsters asked residents:

how people would feel if a close family member married a Republican or a Democrat; how well they think the terms selfish, compassionate, or patriotic describe Democrats versus Republicans; and other questions designed to capture sentiments about political differences.

Here are the results:

On the interactive map in the article you can check out the results by county.  The darker colors show more political polarization with the results expressed in percentiles.  Mineral county was the most polarized (81st percentile) while Eureka County was the least (6th percentile).

In general, the pollsters found:

..the most politically intolerant Americans, according to the analysis, tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, more urban, and more partisan themselves. This finding aligns in some ways with previous research by the University of Pennsylvania professor Diana Mutz, who has found that white, highly educated people are relatively isolated from political diversity. They don’t routinely talk with people who disagree with them; this isolation makes it easier for them to caricature their ideological opponents. (In fact, people who went to graduate school have the least amount of political disagreement in their lives, as Mutz describes in her book Hearing the Other Side.) By contrast, many nonwhite Americans routinely encounter political disagreement. They have more diverse social networks, politically speaking, and therefore tend to have more complicated views of the other side, whatever side that may be.

 It is gratifying perhaps to see so much of Nevada not being very politically polarized; unfortunately there aren't a lot of folks living in these areas. 

-- Mike Power