Thursday, April 28, 2016

The suburbs are a utopia of bipartisanship

Ezra Klein has a great piece today digesting a recent Pew report on political partisanship and public opinion over a range of issues. One of the most striking charts is about where people report they want to live, broken down by partisanship and population density:


The urban-rural divide isn't too shocking; what's curious to me is the incredible consistency of the suburbs (at ~20%), and also the overall preference for small towns.

The terms "city" and "rural area" are pretty well-understood, but "suburb" and "small town" likely mean different things to different people. These responses are to an abstract "if you could live anywhere..." question. I wonder how each density type fits with the actual home addresses of responders; i.e. which density type has the highest proportion of residents who would prefer to stick around in an ideal world?