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The Public Mind

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    Showing 91 of 91 chapters.

    Introduction

    1. Party, belief and the political map

      Party identification and liberal-conservative self-placement became more closely aligned in American surveys, with a correlation of +0.32 in 1972 and +0.72 in 2024, while policy views, political labels and the geography of votes remain distinct objects of study.

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    Volume 1

    The great sorting

    Part IThe sort

    1. 1.1
      Party and ideology

      The correlation between party identification and liberal-conservative self-placement rose from +0.32 in 1972 to +0.72 in 2024 in the American National Election Studies, ended higher on two other surveys, and rose in every cohort, education and region group compared.

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    2. 1.2
      Polarization in Congress

      How far apart are the parties in Congress, and did elite polarization lead or follow the public?

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    3. 1.3
      Sort dates by attitude

      By the lower bound of the 95% interval, the party gap passed 0.25 standard deviations on racial resentment in 1992, abortion in 2008 and religion in 2016; the point estimates alone put those dates at 1986 (the first reading), 1998 and 2012.

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    4. 1.4
      Cohort change in partisan sorting

      Conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans fell from 19.6% to 6.3% of partisans who place themselves on the ideology scale from 1972 to 2024; the fall appears inside cohorts born 1927 to 1974, and how much of it is cohort replacement depends on assumptions the data cannot test.

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    5. 1.5
      Constraint among issue positions

      Are Americans' issue positions more tightly bundled than they were in the 1980s?

      PlannedIndividualsanesces

    6. 1.6
      Political knowledge and constraint

      Is ideological constraint concentrated among the politically informed?

      PlannedIndividualsanes

    7. 1.7
      The South

      Which political gaps between the South and the rest of the country closed, and which persisted?

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    Part IIPartisan feeling

    1. 2.1
      Feelings toward the other party

      Partisans' average rating of the other party fell from 48.0 to 20.6 on a 0 to 100 thermometer between 1978 and 2024, while their rating of their own party stayed near 70.5; 34.7% of the fall since 2008 goes with changes in survey mode.

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    2. 2.2
      Negative partisanship

      The association of reported turnout with coldness toward the other party, beyond warmth toward the own party, grew by 2.6 points per 10 rating points between 1978 to 1990 and 2012 to 2024 and grew under every measure, election type and interview mode checked, while House voting and campaign activity show a change only under some measures and comparisons.

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    3. 2.3
      Affective and issue polarization

      Did emotional distance between partisans grow faster than their distance on issues?

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    4. 2.4
      Party and feelings toward social groups

      Does party now organize feelings toward social groups more than race, religion or income?

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    Part IIIThe party coalitions

    1. 3.1
      The two coalitions

      Voters with a four-year degree rose from 19.2% to 43.4% of Democratic voters between the elections of 1976 to 1988 and those of 2012 to 2024, and from 25.2% to 31.4% of Republican voters, and a group's share of a party's voters can move opposite to its share voting for the party.

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    2. 3.2
      The diploma divide

      In the ANES college graduates went from voting less Democratic than other voters to voting more Democratic, a gap of +23.3 points in 2024 against +12.3 in the CES, while their differences from non-graduates on cultural, racial and immigration issues were already present in the 1990s.

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    3. 3.3
      The income ladder

      From 2008 to 2024 the highest income bracket's Democratic share minus the lowest bracket's went from −9.1 to +5.7 points, and by 2024 the middle brackets were less Democratic than either end, but within education groups the 2024 gap includes zero.

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    4. 3.4
      Hispanic, Black and Asian voters

      How did Hispanic, Black and Asian voters' presidential choices move between 2008 and 2024?

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    5. 3.5
      The gender gap in attitudes and votes

      In 2024 women voted more Democratic than men by 4.1 to 8.1 points, depending on the survey; the gap among voters under thirty cannot be told apart from the older gap; and party separates gender-role attitudes more than gender does in 3 of 4 surveys on the one item each asks; the World Values Survey is the exception, and it compares left-right groups because it has no party variable for the United States.

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    6. 3.6
      Age and generation

      Two-party voters under thirty were more Democratic than those sixty-five and older by +22.2 points in the 2020 CES and +15.0 in 2024, a fall that is detectable only among all CES voters, and repeated surveys cannot separate age, election and birth cohort without an assumption that moves the size of the age effect.

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    7. 3.7
      Turnout

      From 1994 to 2024 turnout among citizens rose with education and family income in every election and was lowest in the youngest age group; in 2024 it was 79.6% for citizens with a bachelor's degree and 39.1% for those without a high school diploma, and about 70% of that gap arose at registration.

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    Part IVIssue by issue

    1. 4.1
      The abortion sort

      In the American National Election Studies the gap between Democrats and Republicans in support for always-legal abortion grew from 3.5 points in 1980 to 52.3 in 2024, mostly on the Democratic side, and the General Social Survey shows the same widening.

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    2. 4.2
      Immigration

      In the ANES the gap between Republicans and Democrats in wanting fewer immigrants grew from 3.3 points in 1992 to 28.3 in 2024, and the GSS, the CES and Nationscape show the same divide.

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    3. 4.3
      Guns

      In the General Social Survey the gap between Republican and Democratic identifiers in household gun ownership grew from 6.8 points in 1973 to 1980 to 27.7 points in 2016 to 2024 (24.7 in person), mostly as ownership fell among Democrats, and the gap in favoring a police permit grew from 4.1 to 29.4 points (23.4 in person and 34.5 on the web), mostly as support fell among Republicans.

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    4. 4.4
      Perceptions of the economy

      Partisans are more likely to say the national economy got better when their own party holds the White House, by 34.0 percentage points on average in the American National Election Studies from 2012 to 2024, and the two parties swap places at every change of party.

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    5. 4.5
      Health care

      In the ANES the gap between Democrats and Republicans on a government health insurance plan was 24.4 points in 1970 and 46.6 points in 2024, and in the ANES and the GSS the Republican share on the government side was lower from 2010 on than before 1993.

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    6. 4.6
      Trade and economic populism

      Where do the parties' voters stand on trade, taxes and redistribution, and did they switch?

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    7. 4.7
      Climate and the environment

      How large is the partisan gap on climate, and is it unusual among rich democracies?

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    8. 4.8
      Foreign policy

      How have views on defense spending and America's role in the world divided by party?

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    Part VRace and racial attitudes

    1. 5.1
      Fifty years of racial attitudes

      Among white respondents, equal-treatment answers rose from the 1970s to the 2000s, answers on discrimination and on government help rose between the 2014 and 2016 surveys, more among Democrats than among Republicans, and the tie between racial resentment and the Republican presidential vote changed by +1.1 points from 2008 to 2012, with an interval whose upper end is 4.6, and by +8.2 from 2012 to 2016.

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    2. 5.2
      Racial attitudes and ideology

      Among white non-Hispanic ANES respondents, the correlation between racial resentment and conservative self-placement rose from +0.27 in 1986 to +0.66 in 2024, and most of that rise is between the parties rather than among people who share a party.

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    3. 5.3
      Racial attitudes after George Floyd's death

      How much did measured racial attitudes move in the weeks after May 25, 2020, and how long did the change last?

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    4. 5.4
      Policing

      When did attitudes toward the police become a partisan divide?

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    Part VITrust, science and democracy

    1. 6.1
      Confidence in thirteen institutions

      The average gap between Democrats and Republicans in the share with a great deal of confidence in thirteen institutions rose from 4.8 points in 1973-1980 to 6.7 in 2011-2018 and was 9.4 in person in 2022-2024, and the gaps run in both directions.

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    2. 6.2
      Trust in government

      Does partisans' trust in the federal government follow the party in the White House?

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    3. 6.3
      Trust in science

      When did confidence in science become a partisan divide, and what did COVID change?

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    4. 6.4
      Generalized and institutional trust

      Have trust in other people and confidence in institutions fallen together?

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    5. 6.5
      Institutional trust outside the United States

      Are partisan or ideological gaps in institutional confidence widening in other democracies?

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    6. 6.6
      Tolerance of speech

      In 2008 to 2018 Democrats allowed a racist to speak 6.8 points less often than Republicans did, while the party gaps on four speakers that conservatives are expected to object to were within 2.1 points of zero and liberals allowed those four more often than conservatives did.

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    7. 6.7
      Support for democracy

      In a fixed set of 39 countries, approval of a strong leader rose by 9.9 points and approval of army rule by 7.6 points between 1995 to 1998 and 2017 to 2023 while support for a democratic system changed by +1.2 points, an average of countries whose survey program stayed the same (−2.8 points) and countries whose program switched (+3.5 points).

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    8. 6.8
      Political violence and democratic norms

      In the 2024 ANES, 17.2% of adult citizens said violence to pursue political goals is justified at least a little, with no party gap that the data separate from zero, while Republicans were more likely than Democrats to expect an inaccurate vote count and to call Trump the legitimate winner of 2020.

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    Volume 2

    Ideology, values and religion

    Part VIIWhat left and right mean

    1. 7.1
      The conservative label

      Who calls themselves conservative, how has that group changed, and how many self-identified conservatives want more government spending?

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    2. 7.2
      Economic and cultural dimensions

      The correlation between economic and cultural conservatism among American adults rose from +0.10 in the 1984 ANES to +0.51 in 2024, and is +0.23 among adults with the same seven-point party identification.

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    3. 7.3
      Class, church and the two axes

      How do income, education and church attendance sort the economic and cultural dimensions?

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    4. 7.4
      Left and right across countries

      The attitude that left-right self-placement follows most closely differs by country, and across countries the median correlations with economic attitudes, moral attitudes and the importance of God lie between +0.07 and +0.09.

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    5. 7.5
      Non-placement on the left-right scale

      Who declines to place themselves on the left-right scale, and where?

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    6. 7.6
      Education and ideology

      Is the link between ideology and political action stronger among the educated?

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    Part VIIIValues beneath politics

    1. 8.1
      Basic values and left-right

      People who rate universalism higher place themselves further left in all 18 Western European countries (mean correlation −0.19), but by the 95% interval values sit on their predicted sides of left-right in 4 of 18 post-communist countries and on the opposite sides in 4.

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    2. 8.2
      Countries in value space

      Where do countries sit on traditional-secular and survival-self-expression values, and how have they moved?

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    3. 8.3
      The silent revolution

      Are younger birth cohorts more emancipative, and has the shift stalled?

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    4. 8.4
      The obedience-autonomy disposition

      Valuing obedience over autonomy in children tracks left-right placement weakly (median correlation +0.04 across 103 countries), while in the United States its correlation with party identification rose from −0.04 in 1992 to +0.28 in 2024, except among Black respondents.

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    5. 8.5
      Order, security and threat

      Do security values and threat perceptions lean right, and where?

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    6. 8.6
      National pride and grievance

      Do national pride and national grievance relate to nativism in the same way?

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    7. 8.7
      System justification

      Do people with lower incomes believe in meritocracy less than those with higher incomes?

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    Part IXReligion and morality

    1. 9.1
      The god gap in America

      The Democratic vote gap between seldom and frequent attenders rose from 5.5 points in the ANES studies of 1972 to 1988 to 21.8 points in those of 2008 to 2020 and was 27.7 points in the 2024 CES.

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    2. 9.2
      The rise of the nones

      How fast did the religiously unaffiliated grow, and how do they vote?

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    3. 9.3
      Religious tradition and race

      In 2024 white born-again Protestants voted 14.5% Democratic and Black Protestants 83.1%, and attendance relates to the vote by +9.5 points among the first and +0.8 points among the second, so the pooled attendance gap combines groups with different gaps.

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    4. 9.4
      Secularization in Europe

      Do two independent surveys agree on where European religious attendance fell?

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    5. 9.5
      Two moralities

      Which moral judgments divide left from right, and do abortion, gay rights and gender roles form one attitude dimension?

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    Volume 3

    The political map

    Part XThe nationalized map

    1. 10.1
      Nationalization of the county vote

      Counties moved more nearly in step in 2020 to 2024 than in any other pair of presidential elections since 1868, with a vote-weighted standard deviation of county swings of 4.5 points against 5.0 in 2008 to 2012, the next lowest.

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    2. 10.2
      Distance from the national vote, 1868 to 2024

      The share of two-party votes cast in counties at least 20 points from the national margin rose from 25.5% in 1976 to 56.5% in 2024, and every region is now above 50%, as only the South was in 1904.

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    3. 10.3
      Down the ballot

      In 2024 4.7% of ANES voters reported different parties for president and the House, against 22.3% in 1992, and the presidential and House winners differed in 2.8% of counties in which every district part of the House race was contested, against 31.0% in 1992.

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    4. 10.4
      The Electoral College

      How far is the tipping-point state from the popular vote, and how many states are competitive?

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    5. 10.5
      Reconstruction and the modern map

      How does the Southern county map of the 1870s relate to the map of 2024?

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    Part XIBelow the county line

    1. 11.1
      Precincts within counties

      In 2024, 65.0% of the two-party presidential votes in the sample were cast in precincts decided by 20 points or more, against 57.2% in counties decided by that margin and 56.6% in a simulation that assigns voters to precincts at random.

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    2. 11.2
      Sorting by geographic scale, 2016 to 2024

      How does partisan sorting change as the unit shrinks from state to county to neighborhood, and did lopsided neighborhoods become less lopsided between 2016 and 2024?

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    Part XIIDemographic axes of the vote

    1. 12.1
      Five axes of the county vote

      In 2024 college share, rural share and the white share had vote-weighted correlations with the county two-party margin of +0.66, −0.65 and −0.57, and five county characteristics together reproduce 69% of the variance of the margin, up from 41% in 2000.

      DraftPlacescounty-returnscounty-demographics

    2. 12.2
      The diploma map

      Vote-weighted, a county's Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote was 9.2 points higher per 10 points of college share in 2024, against 3.9 in 2000, and the rise came from 2000 to 2008 and from 2012 to 2016, with a change after 2016 of 0.0 for the unadjusted slope and +0.4 to +1.1 for adjusted versions.

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    3. 12.3
      Income and the county vote

      Do richer counties vote more Democratic once education is held constant?

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    4. 12.4
      Wages, capital and the ZIP code vote

      ZIP codes with more capital-gains returns swung more toward the Democrats between 2016 and 2020 and ZIP codes with more EITC returns swung less, but the capital-gains sign depends on the controls and the EITC link is near zero with poverty, college and race held fixed, and the definition of the ZIP-code college variable is unresolved.

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    5. 12.5
      Rural counties

      How different are white-majority rural counties from Black Belt and Hispanic rural counties?

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    6. 12.6
      Suburbs and density

      Is the density gradient in the vote as steep within counties as between them?

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    7. 12.7
      Education, ethnicity and the county shift, 2016 to 2024

      In 2020 to 2024, counties with more Hispanic residents moved further toward the Republicans than other counties did (vote-weighted correlation −0.66, against +0.45 in 2012 to 2016), while the correlation with college share fell from +0.69 to +0.02.

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    Part XIIIHardship, health and the vote

    1. 13.1
      Measures of hardship compared

      Of the 20 tract measures of hardship that track the 2020 Democratic vote before any controls, 3 keep at least 50% of that association once race and ethnicity, education, density and state are held fixed, 9 lose more than 50% of it and 8 reverse sign, by a grouping rule set after a first run of the estimates.

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    2. 13.2
      Firearm deaths and the vote

      How do firearm suicide and firearm homicide rates relate to the neighborhood vote?

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    3. 13.3
      Deprivation and mobility

      Does present-day deprivation or childhood mobility track the vote once race is held constant?

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    4. 13.4
      Health outcomes and the vote

      Which of 40 small-area health outcomes track the vote net of demographics?

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    5. 13.5
      Social capital

      How do bonding ties and cross-class connections relate to the vote and to the 2016 to 2020 swing?

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    6. 13.6
      Air pollution and the vote

      Tracts with more diesel exposure voted more Democratic in 2020, by 24.8 points per standard deviation of exposure, but only 4.9 points once race, income, education and density are held fixed.

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    7. 13.7
      Deaths of despair

      Do county suicide, alcohol and overdose deaths track the presidential swing over time?

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    8. 13.8
      COVID and the vote

      Did county COVID mortality and vaccination follow the partisan map?

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    Part XIVThe money map

    1. 14.1
      Who donates

      What share of Americans give to campaigns, and how concentrated are the dollars?

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    2. 14.2
      The geography of donations

      Where do campaign dollars come from, and do county donor pools show the same education and income gradients as county votes?

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    3. 14.3
      Occupation and donations

      How does donors' ideology vary by occupation?

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    4. 14.4
      The ideology of the donor pool

      Among reliable donors, the share near the middle of the CFscore left-right scale fell from 11.8% in 1980 to 1.2% in 2024, and donors who joined the pool account for most of the fall.

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    5. 14.5
      Candidate extremity and vote share

      Do more extreme House candidates still lose vote share, and has that changed?

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    6. 14.6
      Stated and funded ideology

      How closely does a county's self-reported ideology match the ideology of its donors?

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    7. 14.7
      Counties where donors and voters diverge

      Across counties, donors lean left where the Democratic vote is higher (correlation −0.85, weighted by votes), and 74 of the 98 Democratic-voting counties with right-leaning donors are at least 30% Black.

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    Part XVPlace and opinion

    1. 15.1
      Party and place

      Across 12 policy issues, Democrats and Republicans in the same kind of deep county differ by 43.1 points in the share taking the Democratic side, 7.6 times the 5.6-point difference between deep-blue and deep-red counties within a party.

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    2. 15.2
      Immigration and local context

      Do immigration attitudes differ with the local foreign-born share?

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    3. 15.3
      Variation in opinion within places

      How much of the variation in issue opinion lies between counties rather than within them?

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    4. 15.4
      Partisans in the other party's territory

      Where do Democrats and Republicans live in counties their party lost, and do these voters and donors differ from aligned partisans?

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    5. 15.5
      Composition and behavior in county change

      How much of county-level change since 2000 is composition and how much is behavior within groups?

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    6. 15.6
      Movers and opinion change

      Do people who move to a different kind of county change their political views?

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