The role of neighborhood characteristics in explaining political party residential segregation

Abstract

High levels of neighborhood political residential segregation have recently been documented for the U.S. This has raised concerns, based on the argument that more politically homogeneous neighborhoods promote extremism and ideological intensity, resulting in this same extremism displayed by elected politicians. Using tens of thousands of single-family home sales from South Florida, our purpose is to examine the extent to which neighborhood observable descriptors can explain party segregation. Our results reveal significant differences between Democrat and Republican home buyers in the types of neighborhoods they choose. In comparison to Democrats, Republicans more frequently chose neighborhoods where a larger percentage of workers have short commutes, homes are on average larger in size, there are fewer restaurants and shops, population density is lower, and Hispanics are a smaller percentage of residents. These differences are found to be important in explaining neighborhood party segregation.