Who’s Reading The Big Sort and Why?
By Al Cross
When he was elected president in 1976, Jimmy Carter got 50.1 percent of the vote, and the race was competitive in most places. Little more than a fourth of Americans lived in “landslide counties,” in which Carter or Gerald Ford got 60 percent or more of the vote. By 2004, when John Kerry challenged George W. Bush, and the race was almost as close, almost half the voters were in landslide counties.
Louisville native Bill Bishop and Texas sociologist Robert Cushing discovered the change while studying migration patters to find factors that led to localities’ economic success. Further research led to this book. It argues persuasively, with a fascinating mix of data and stories, that Americans’ affluence and mobility, and our modern media, marketing and politics, have led to sharper partisan and ideological divisions.
“The Big Sort” is not just about politics, but about the way we live, and how that affects politics. “Ways of life now have a distinct politics and a distinct geography,” Bishop writes. And with the proliferation of media outlets, and their increasing emphasis on cheap-to-deliver opinion than expensive-to-gather fact, we are more able to seek out information that confirms our existing views and are less likely to hear contrary opinions. In a 12-nation survey, Americans were least likely to discuss politics with someone of opposing views.
As our views are reinforced by our neighbors, the channels of our choice and our desire to conform, they become more extreme, and politics becomes more about turning out the base than appealing to a shrinking middle. Bishop says Bush won in 2004 because Democrats did not understand The Big Sort and Republicans did, using niche-marketing research to identify likely prospects and using neighbors or like-minded folks to canvass precincts rather than importing volunteers who often looked like they didn’t belong.
Barack Obama and John McCain are targeting more broadly, at least for now. That’s good; the phenomenon explored by Bishop undermines the fundamental founding principle of a heterogeneous Congress, with members free to compromise, unbound by specific instructions from their constituencies. University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein is the book’s source for that, as well as the finding that federal judges tend to rule more extremely when on panels with judges appointed by a president of the same party. The desire to conform is powerful.
Bishop traces The Big Sort to 1965, when the country began to divide over Vietnam and race riots slowed or stopped the growing consensus for civil rights. He says less about other social issues – school prayer, gun control, abortion and gay rights – that have surely played major roles. For many Americans, the liberal push on these issues invaded space they considered personal. Once personal issues become political, no wonder politics influences personal choices, and not just residence.
The book counters the conventional wisdom that Americans have become less partisan. Political identity has even become a predictor of personal behavior, such as parenting. A 2005 study found that “Republicans favored respect, obedience, good manners,” Bishop writes. “They were strict fathers. Democrats were nurturant parents.”
Bishop is not the first to explore this phenomenon. Among his predecessors are David Brooks, perhaps today’s best political columnist, who wrote in 2004, “We have happily been hiving ourselves off into self-congratulatory reinforcement groups.” But this book traces the causes through geography, psychology, sociology and economics in ways that inform and entertain. It’s a bit repetitive, but the anecdotes keep the narrative lively, and Bishop’s evenhanded treatment makes this a good read no matter where you are on the political spectrum.
Watch the video and at about four minutes in, President Bill Clinton will tell you what he thinks about The Big Sort.
Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. Bishop is a member of the institute’s advisory board.
Posted on July 24th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Media, Uncategorized
On my way to our local bookseller to buy this book. Sounds very very interesting.
Sort this: while 99% of our elected officials are either Democrats or Republicans, 40% of the electorate they (supposedly) represent are independents. We have a divide in the country all right — between the corrupt partisan system and the voters. That’s what this sea change election is about. That’s the momentum behind Barack Obama’s (and John McCain’s for that matter) candidacy. We’re in the midst of a pardigm change, but you won’t see that unless you step out of the bifurcated world of major party spin.
Notwithstanding that being a pretty obviously partisan Democratic Party person is a big part of my life, it is ever clearer to me that independent voters are exactly that — independent and thirsty for solutions to the problems facing all of America. To ignore that fact is to endanger democracy and first things first – to preserve our democracy by exploring what the candidates have to say and voting our individual conscience is the only way that change can happen. The best way to grow and change for the better is to respect the voters, all of them, Dems, Rs, independents as well as other minority party members.
[...] “Some of us are gonna have to cross the street,” says Clinton. See his video interview at http://www.ruralvotes.com/thebackforty/?p=202. Now is the time for all of us to “cross the street” and become the adult citizens of [...]