# The Public Mind > Data essays on American partisanship, ideology and the political map. Vishal Singh, NYU Stern. https://vishalsingh.org/politics Cite as: Singh, Vishal. The Public Mind: Data essays on American partisanship, ideology and the political map. 2026. https://vishalsingh.org/politics Methods: https://vishalsingh.org/politics/reference/methods Every chapter has a report at /report, the same report as Markdown at /report.md (listed below), its facts at https://vishalsingh.org/politics/report//facts.json and each figure's rows at https://vishalsingh.org/politics/report//figures/.json. All reports in one file: https://vishalsingh.org/politics/llms-full.txt ## Chapters - [Introduction. Party, belief and the political map](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/party-belief-and-the-political-map/report.md): Party identification and liberal-conservative self-placement moved closer together in the ANES, with a correlation of +0.32 in 1972 and +0.72 in 2024. - [Chapter 1.1. Party and ideology](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/party-and-ideology/report.md): Among ANES respondents, the correlation between party identification and liberal-conservative self-placement rose from +0.32 in 1972 to +0.72 in 2024. - [Chapter 1.3. Sort dates by attitude](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/sort-dates-by-attitude/report.md): Among ANES partisans, the party gap passed a fixed threshold by the lower bound of its interval on racial resentment in 1992, on abortion in 2008 and on the importance of religion in 2016. - [Chapter 1.4. Cohort change in partisan sorting](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/how-the-sort-happened/report.md): Among ANES partisans who place themselves on the ideology scale, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans fell from 19.6% in 1972 to 6.3% in 2024. - [Chapter 2.1. Feelings toward the other party](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/feelings-toward-the-other-party/report.md): Among ANES partisans, the average rating of the other party on the 0 to 100 feeling thermometer fell from 48.0 in 1978 to 20.6 in 2024. - [Chapter 2.2. Negative partisanship](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/negative-partisanship/report.md): Among ANES partisans in 2012 to 2024, each 10 points of coldness toward the other party went with 3.5 points more own-party House voting, against 1.9 points for the same warmth toward the own party. - [Chapter 3.1. The two coalitions](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-two-coalitions/report.md): Voters with a four-year degree rose from 19.2% to 43.4% of Democratic voters in the ANES between the presidential elections of 1976 to 1988 and those of 2012 to 2024. - [Chapter 3.2. The diploma divide](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-diploma-divide/report.md): In the ANES, college graduates went from voting less Democratic than other voters to voting more Democratic, a gap of +23.3 points of the two-party presidential vote in 2024. - [Chapter 3.3. The income ladder](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-income-ladder/report.md): In the CES the highest household-income bracket's Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote minus the lowest bracket's went from −9.1 points in 2008 to +5.7 in 2024. - [Chapter 3.5. The gender gap in attitudes and votes](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-gender-gap/report.md): In 2024 women gave the Democratic presidential candidate more of the two-party vote than men did, by 8.1 points in the ANES. - [Chapter 3.6. Age and generation](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/age-and-generation/report.md): In the CES, two-party presidential voters under thirty were more Democratic than those sixty-five and older by +22.2 points in 2020 and +15.0 in 2024. - [Chapter 3.7. Turnout](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/turnout/report.md): In the November 2024 Current Population Survey, 79.6% of citizens aged twenty-five and older with a bachelor's degree reported voting, against 39.1% of those without a high school diploma. - [Chapter 4.1. The abortion sort](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-abortion-sort/report.md): In the American National Election Studies, the share saying abortion should always be allowed was 3.5 points higher among Democrats than Republicans in 1980 and 52.3 points higher in 2024. - [Chapter 4.2. Immigration](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/immigration/report.md): In the American National Election Studies, the share wanting fewer immigrants was 3.3 points higher among Republicans than Democrats in 1992 and 28.3 points higher in 2024. - [Chapter 4.3. Guns](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/guns/report.md): In the General Social Survey, the share living in a household with a gun was 6.8 points higher among Republicans than Democrats in 1973 to 1980 and 27.7 points higher in 2016 to 2024. - [Chapter 4.4. Perceptions of the economy](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/perceptions-of-the-economy/report.md): In the American National Election Studies from 2012 to 2024, the president's partisans were 34.0 points more likely than the other party's partisans to say the economy had gotten better over the past year. - [Chapter 4.5. Health care](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/health-care/report.md): In the American National Election Studies, the share on the government side of the health insurance scale was 24.4 points higher among Democrats than Republicans in 1970 and 46.6 points higher in 2024. - [Chapter 5.1. Fifty years of racial attitudes](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/fifty-years-of-racial-attitudes/report.md): Among white respondents to the General Social Survey, the share attributing racial inequality mainly to discrimination was 30.0% in 2014 and 41.2% in 2018, after equal-treatment answers had risen from the 1970s to the 2000s. - [Chapter 5.2. Racial attitudes and ideology](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/racial-attitudes-and-ideology/report.md): Among white non-Hispanic respondents to the American National Election Studies, the correlation between racial resentment and conservative self-placement was +0.27 in 1986 and +0.66 in 2024. - [Chapter 6.1. Confidence in thirteen institutions](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/confidence-in-institutions/report.md): Among respondents interviewed in person, the average size of the gap between Democrats and Republicans in confidence across thirteen institutions was 4.8 points in 1973-1980 and 9.4 points in 2022-2024. - [Chapter 6.6. Tolerance of speech](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/tolerance-of-speech/report.md): In 2008 to 2018 Democrats allowed a racist speaker 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. - [Chapter 6.7. Support for democracy](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/support-for-democracy/report.md): In a fixed set of countries, support for a democratic system changed by +1.2 points between 1995 to 1998 and 2017 to 2023, while approval of a strong leader rose by 9.9 points and army rule by 7.6 points. - [Chapter 6.8. Political violence and democratic norms](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/political-violence-and-democratic-norms/report.md): 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. - [Chapter 7.2. Economic and cultural dimensions](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/economic-and-cultural-dimensions/report.md): Among American adults, the correlation between an index of economic conservatism and an index of cultural conservatism rose from +0.10 in the 1984 ANES to +0.51 in 2024. - [Chapter 7.4. Left and right across countries](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/left-and-right-across-countries/report.md): The attitude that left-right self-placement follows most closely differs by country, and across countries surveyed in 2005 or later the median correlation on each of three attitudes lies between +0.07 and +0.09. - [Chapter 8.1. Basic values and left-right](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/basic-values-and-left-right/report.md): People who rate universalism higher place themselves further left in all 18 Western European countries in the ESS from 2002 to 2024, with a mean correlation of −0.19. - [Chapter 8.4. The obedience-autonomy disposition](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-obedience-autonomy-disposition/report.md): Valuing obedience over autonomy in children goes with placing oneself further right, with a median correlation of +0.04 across 103 countries in the WVS and EVS from 2005 to 2023. - [Chapter 9.1. The god gap in America](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-god-gap-in-america/report.md): 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. - [Chapter 9.3. Religious tradition and race](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/religious-tradition-and-race/report.md): In the 2024 CES, seldom attenders voted more Democratic than frequent attenders by +9.5 points among white born-again Protestants and by +0.8 points among Black Protestants, an interval that includes zero. - [Chapter 10.1. Nationalization of the county vote](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/nationalization-of-the-county-vote/report.md): 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. - [Chapter 10.2. Distance from the national vote, 1868 to 2024](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-landslide-county/report.md): 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. - [Chapter 10.3. Down the ballot](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/down-the-ballot/report.md): Among ANES voters who reported major-party votes for president and the House, 4.7% chose different parties in 2024, against 22.3% in 1992 and 29.5% in 1972. - [Chapter 11.1. Precincts within counties](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/precincts-within-counties/report.md): In 2024, 65.0% of 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. - [Chapter 12.1. Five axes of the county vote](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/five-axes-of-the-county-vote/report.md): In 2024, college share had the largest correlation with the county two-party margin among five county characteristics, +0.66 vote-weighted, and it is not separated from rural share's −0.65. - [Chapter 12.2. The diploma map](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-diploma-map/report.md): Counting counties by their votes, a county with 10 more points of college share had a Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote 9.2 points higher in 2024, against 3.9 points in 2000. - [Chapter 12.4. Wages, capital and the ZIP code vote](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/wages-capital-and-the-county-vote/report.md): From 2016 to 2020, ZIP codes in the highest decile of capital-gains returns swung 5.4 points toward the Democrats and those in the highest decile of earned income tax credit returns 5.2 points toward the Republicans, links that depend on the controls. - [Chapter 12.7. Education, ethnicity and the county shift, 2016 to 2024](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/education-ethnicity-and-the-county-shift/report.md): In 2020 to 2024, counties with more Hispanic residents moved further toward the Republicans than other counties did, a vote-weighted correlation of −0.66 with the swing, against +0.45 in 2012 to 2016. - [Chapter 13.1. Measures of hardship compared](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/measures-of-hardship-compared/report.md): Across 80,873 census tracts, the median absolute coefficient of a hardship measure on the 2020 Democratic vote falls from 4.7 points per standard deviation to 2.2 once race and ethnicity, education, density and state are held fixed. - [Chapter 13.6. Air pollution and the vote](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/air-pollution-and-the-vote/report.md): 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. - [Chapter 14.4. The ideology of the donor pool](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/the-ideology-of-the-donor-pool/report.md): Among reliable individual donors, the share with a CFscore near zero fell from 11.8% in 1980 to 1.2% in 2024, a change in who gives rather than in any donor's score. - [Chapter 14.7. Counties where donors and voters diverge](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/counties-where-donors-and-voters-diverge/report.md): In 570 of 2,839 counties, or 20.1%, the reliable donors of 1980 to 2024 lean opposite to the county's 2020 presidential vote, a count that depends on the definition of divergence. - [Chapter 15.1. Party and place](https://vishalsingh.org/politics/party-and-place/report.md): Across 12 policy issues in 2013 to 2021, Democrats and Republicans in the same kind of county differ by 43.1 points, and one party's members in deep-blue and deep-red counties differ by 5.6 points.