Robert David Sullivan 2

Have strip malls driven suburbanites to the Democratic Party?

Reid Buckley (youngest brother of William F.) laments the state of the GOP in The American Conservative. Though he doesn't frame it this way, one sentence provides an explanation for the steadily diminishing strength of the Republican Party in suburbia:

When last did you hear a conservative spokesman deplore yet another six-lane highway, yet another fast-food alley, yet another graceless subdivision, yet another Super Wal-Mart or Lowe’s that sucks the life out of small village businesses, yet one more onslaught against neighborhood and nature that is masked under the name of progress?

Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America

A few readers have commented on similarities between Beyond Red & Blue's 10 States of American Politics and a 1981 book by Joel Garreau of the Washington Post called The Nine Nations of North America. Garreau's book, not surprisingly, made a big impression on me (certainly more than The Lord of the Rings or the misleadingly named Atlas Shrugged, both of which had adherents among my contemporaries). I have a yellowed paperback edition of Nine Nations at my desk right now; it's survived a lot of moving days. The book is out of print, but you can see Garreau's map on Wikipedia.

There are some differences between the two models, but also some geographical divisions that are still valid today. Garreau included Canada and Mexico and, unlike me, he did not set out to draw regions that were of equal size. He did not split any regions into two or more parts. And his emphasis was on economic conditions rather than political allegiances. My main quibble is with the Foundry region, which includes not only the industrial cities of Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, but also Chicago and most of the New York City area (he cuts out lower Manhattan and refuses to place it in any of his nine regions). Politically and economically, there is too much diversity in this area to qualify it as an entity. Even in 1981, Long Island did not belong with Flint, Michigan. Dixie was also too big, and parts of it are in four of my regions, though we both decided that Miami did not belong with Jacksonville and Memphis.

But Garreau's Mexamerica is basically the same as my El Norte, and the combination of his New England and Ecotopia is close to my Upper Coasts. If you're not familiar with his map, check it out, and let me know whether it makes more sense instinctively. 

Catholic cities aren't liberal?

The New York Times' City Room blog is inviting readers to "Name America's Most Liberal City," in response to Rudy Giuliani's campaign commerical giving the title to the Big Apple. Boston gets a couple of shout-outs, but Cambridge is mentioned more often. I offer no answer, maybe because I was struck by this non sequitur in blogger Sewall Chan's argument that New York might not be on the far left:

But on social issues — including identity rights, gay rights and abortion rights — the city is less predictably liberal, Dr. Mollenkopf said. About 45 percent of the city’s residents are Roman Catholic, including about 15 percent of the black population. A large majority of the city’s Latino population is Catholic, at least nominally. Other segments of the population — like the large population of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn — are also socially conservative.

I don't see how the percentage of the city that's Catholic is relevant when every major poll that I've seen for years indicates that, on average, Catholics are no more conservative (or liberal) than the electorate as a whole. According to CNN, Catholics voted for George Bush over John Kerry by a 52-47 margin in 2004, which was statistically insignificant from the 51-48 margin by which he won the election (and far his 59-40 margin among Protestants). Also according to CNN, Al Gore beat Bush by a 50-47 margin among Catholics, which was slightly better than Gore's performance overall. And a 2003 CBS News poll indicated that Catholics have no particular slant on the issue of abortion:

Catholics and Protestants in the survey held roughly the same views on the issue. 36% of Catholics believe abortion should be generally available, and 34% of Protestants agree. 27% of Catholics think abortion should not be permitted, and 24% of Protestants believe this, as well.

I know that there's a compulsion to characterize every demographic group in America as a bloc that consistently leans one way or another, but right now Catholics don't fit that model, and it's meaningless to deduce anything politically from how Catholic a city is.

Voting as if your life depended on it

Scientific American.com reports on a study, by political scientist James Fowler, suggesting that the desire to cast a ballot is genetic. That's one explanation for the finding that identical twins are more alike in voter behavior than are fraternal twins, who share less DNA: 

Fowler notes that people who vote often do so even when they know their lone ballot will not change the outcome of an election. “It’s almost like voters are programmed to keep voting, even when their common sense tells them it is probably useless,” he states....

Fowler hypothesizes that because “we obviously did not vote in large-scale elections in the Pleistocene,” the drive to vote or participate in politics may be linked with genes underlying more ancient behaviors, such as innate dispositions toward cooperation.

I wonder whether "innate dispositions" explain not only the eagerness to vote, but also the degree to which one thinks society's very existence depends on the outcome of an election. And I'm not just talking about presidential elections, but about zoning variances being put to a vote at town meetings. The idea of a new curb cut in the neighborhood seems to unleash raw, primal emotions in some people.

The idea that genetics trumps get-out-the-vote efforts is not inconsistent with another study released this year, which said one's interest in politics comes directly from one's parents. I included the item in the "Statistically Significant" department of the current issue of CommonWealth:

Adolescents who discuss current events with their parents are more civically engaged and more eager to vote than their peers, say three researchers in the July issue of PS: Political Science and Politics. That may seem obvious, but the more surprising result of their regression-analysis study is how little socioeconomic factors matter. “The effect size of the youth-discussion variable,” write Hugh McIntosh, Daniel Hart, and James Youniss, “is three times larger than any other parent or youth predictor” in determining whether a high schooler regularly follows the news. The study showed no significant correlation between “news monitoring” and whether one’s parents were homeowners, were steadily employed, or even whether they had voted themselves during the previous five years. “Who parents are” is less important than “what parents do with their children,” the authors conclude.