Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Partisan divide creates different Americas, separate lives

Opinion

Partisan divide creates different Americas, separate lives

"To keep American democracy healthy, people all across the country will have to do more than engage with different ideas online," writes Robert B. Talisse.

Matt Mills McKnight/Getty Images

Talisse is a philosophy professor at Vanderbilt University.

When people try to explain why the United States is so politically polarized now, they frequently refer to the concept of "echo chambers."

That's the idea that people on social media interact only with like-minded people, reinforcing each other's beliefs. When people don't encounter competing ideas, the argument goes, they become less willing to cooperate with political opponents.

The problem goes beyond the online world. In my new book, " Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in its Place," I explain that in the United States, liberals and conservatives do not only differ politically.

They also live separate lives in the physical world.


This phenomenon was first documented in journalist Bill Bishop's 2004 book " The Big Sort." Scholars have found it has persisted into more recent years as well.

It turns out that people's physical communities, surroundings and lifestyles can be their own form of an echo chamber. This separation is so complete that it includes not only the communities and neighborhoods where people live, but also where people shop and what brands they buy, what sort of work they do, where they worship, what sorts of vacations they take and even how they decorate their homes.

It's common knowledge that liberals and conservatives live in different places. After all, the idea of "red states" and "blue states"is based in reality. But preferences are much more local than that.

Liberals and conservatives in the U.S. systematically favor different kinds of physical environments. Even when they live in regions that might overall appear more politically mixed, liberals prefer walkable and ethnically diverse communities, while conservatives gravitate toward areas with larger houses and more private land.

Different preferences govern the most personal surroundings: One study shows that liberals and conservatives decorate their homes differently. Clocks and flags for conservatives, art and maps for liberals. According to the same research, they also fashion different workspaces. Conservatives favor neater and more orderly spaces, while liberals tend to work in offices that are less organized and more colorful.

When it comes to commerce, the contrasting stereotypes are familiar: Walmart or Target? Starbucks or Dunkin? Hybrid or pickup? Football or fútbol? Whole Foods or Kroger? Beyoncé or Toby Keith? A broad body of research suggests that these references to consumer habits are effective representatives of political views.

Political opponents tend to shop at different stores, with conservatives at Walmart and liberals at Target. Shoppers favor different brands of home coffeemaker, pet food and jeans depending on their political preferences.Liberals and conservatives even view the very act of shopping differently. One experiment found that conservatives seek to purchase items that signal their status within a social hierarchy, such as luxury and success, while liberals seek out purchases that will establish their individuality and distinctness.

Similar dynamics appear in other spheres of Americans' daily lives. Over the past two decades, the American workplace, once heralded as a site of cross-partisan cooperation, has become more politically homogeneous.

Certain professions now tend to skew decidedly left or right. Lawyers, journalists and professors tend to skew liberal, whereas conservatives are prevalent in finance and medicine.

Liberals and conservatives live in different kinds of family groups. Liberals get married later in life and have fewer children. Data even show that people tend to be more romantically interested in those who share their political affliation, rather than people who don't. In fact, Americans are more disapproving of cross-partisan relationships than they are of interracial ones.

Liberals and conservatives worship in different congregations; conservatives tend toward evangelical Christianity, while liberals are more diverse in their faith. And they take different kinds of vacations. Liberals more often vacation abroad and spend more time at beaches than conservatives, who tend to travel by car to spots where they can fish and play golf.

In ways that are not always conscious, more and more personal choices and characteristics are regarded by citizens as expressing partisan allegiances. Carrying a tote bag, wearing yoga pants, shopping at Walmart, driving a pickup truck are all ways of signaling one's political affiliation. This in turn reinforces the fact that liberals and conservatives inhabit different social worlds, each becoming at once increasingly homogeneous within their groups and more intensely hostile toward the other.

Finding common ground in such a divided country will require more than one commonly offered solution, that people diversify their news sources. With political disputes magnified and amplified by disparate, even opposing, ways of life, it's harder to see political rivals as fellow citizens.

Rather, they appear to be obstacles and threats. Encounters with these opposing forces breed fear and hostility, not comfort and familiarity.

With citizens sorted into physical and digital partisan enclaves, the Democratic and Republican parties find it rewarding to accentuate their differences from each other. Unwillingness to compromise or cooperate with the other side becomes a sign of integrity, leaving the business of politics undone.

To keep American democracy healthy, people all across the country will have to do more than engage with different ideas online. They'll need to find shared interests and goals despite their persistent, and often deep, differences. The solution, it seems to me, is to find things to do together that are in no way political. But in a world where nearly everything – even carrying tote bag or driving a pickup – is an expression of one's politics, that may be easier said than done.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

The Conversation

Read More

Understanding the Debate on Health Secretary Kennedy’s Vaccine Panelists

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., January 29, 2025 in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Chen Mengtong/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)

Understanding the Debate on Health Secretary Kennedy’s Vaccine Panelists

Summary

On June 9, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), dismissed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Secretary Kennedy claimed the move was necessary to eliminate “conflicts of interest” and restore public trust in vaccines, which he argued had been compromised by the influence of pharmaceutical companies. However, this decision strays from precedent and has drawn significant criticism from medical experts and public health officials across the country. Some argue that this shake-up undermines scientific independence and opens the door to politicized decision-making in vaccine policy.

Background: What Is ACIP?

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is a federal advisory group that helps guide national vaccine policy. Established in 1964, it has over 60 years of credibility as an evidence-based body of medical and scientific experts. ACIP makes official recommendations on vaccine schedules for both children and adults, determining which immunizations are required for school entry, covered by health insurance, and prioritized in public health programs. The committee is composed of specialists in immunology, epidemiology, pediatrics, infectious disease, and public health, all of whom are vetted for scientific rigor and ethical standards. ACIP’s guidance holds national weight, shaping both public perception of vaccines and the policies of institutions like schools, hospitals, and insurers.

Keep ReadingShow less
MQ-9 Predator Drones Hunt Migrants at the Border
Way into future, RPA Airmen participate in Red Flag 16-2 > Creech ...

MQ-9 Predator Drones Hunt Migrants at the Border

FT HUACHUCA, Ariz. - Inside a windowless and dark shipping container turned into a high-tech surveillance command center, two analysts peered at their own set of six screens that showed data coming in from an MQ-9 Predator B drone. Both were looking for two adults and a child who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and had fled when a Border Patrol agent approached in a truck.

Inside the drone hangar on the other side of the Fort Huachuca base sat another former shipping container, this one occupied by a drone pilot and a camera operator who pivoted the drone's camera to scan nine square miles of shrubs and saguaros for the migrants. Like the command center, the onetime shipping container was dark, lit only by the glow of the computer screens.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Trump 2020 flag outside of a home.

As Trump’s second presidency unfolds, rural America—the foundation of his 2024 election win—is feeling the sting. From collapsing export markets to cuts in healthcare and infrastructure, those very voters are losing faith.

Getty Images, ablokhin

Trump’s 2.0 Actions Have Harmed Rural America Who Voted for Him

Daryl Royal, the 20-year University of Texas football coach, once said, “You've gotta dance with them that brung ya.” The modern adaptation of that quote is “you gotta dance with the one who brought you to the party.” The expression means you should remain loyal to the people or things that helped you succeed.

Sixty-three percent of America’s 3,144 counties are predominantly rural, and Donald Trump won 93 percent of those counties in 2024. Analyses show that rural counties have become increasingly solid Republican, and Trump’s margin of victory within rural America reached a new high in the 2024 election.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hands Off Our Elections: States and Congress, Not Presidents, Set the Rules
white concrete dome museum

Hands Off Our Elections: States and Congress, Not Presidents, Set the Rules

Trust in elections is fragile – and once lost, it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. While Democrats and Republicans disagree on many election policies, there is broad bipartisan agreement on one point: executive branch interference in elections undermines the constitutional authority of states and Congress to determine how elections are run.

Recent executive branch actions threaten to upend this constitutional balance, and Congress must act before it’s too late. To be clear – this is not just about the current president. Keeping the executive branch out of elections is a crucial safeguard against power grabs by any future president, Democrat or Republican.

Keep ReadingShow less