Polarization is a condition of big city living by deeply political journalists.

Ironically, the article itself is the usual mash-up of political propaganda and talking points but the lead is interesting.  From the New York Times, Do You Live in a Political Bubble? by Gus Wezerek, Ryan D. Enos and Jacob Brown.

I know I live in a political bubble.  I am in downtown Atlanta, an old Blue Political machine if there ever were one.  In the past I have seen my local precinct results on the order of 92% Democrat.  Not surprising when the precinct serves both a University and a very prosperous neighborhood where the virtue signaling of ideological passions is a popular past time for some.  

The NYT has an app where you can enter your address and see how much voter homogeneity there is in your area.  The journalists make the rudimentary mistake of using degree of homogeneity with living in a bubble.  Surprising that professionals whose livelihood is words should be so cavalier with definitions.  Living in a bubble is an outcome from personal choices and behaviors.  Voter homogeneity is an external reality.  They are getting increasingly confused as they allow CRT/Social Justice Theory and general Wokeness eat away at their cognitive abilities.  

For my address the answer is reasonably in line with what I would have expected.  

You live in a Democratic bubble. Only 22 percent of your neighbors are Republicans.

Helpfully they point out that if I want some diversity, all I have to do is move.

There's a zip code seven miles away with a roughly equal mix of Democrats and Republicans.

Notably, that is just about the distance to the perimeter.  In other words, outside the city.  

It has been very striking to me over the past year and a half, in a dyed in the wool Democratic city, just how many people are rising in opposition to the Democratic regime, its inclination to defund the police, inability to deliver reliable city services, its disregard for due process, the joy in its insistence that during Covid-19 we should not be locking up criminals, etc.  

As violent crime has risen markedly, as the nights are filled with the sounds of racing muscle cars sans mufflers in residential areas, as lockdown restrictions continue though only selectively enforced, as the corruption of low-income housing set-asides becomes increasingly obvious, as the city keeps funneling taxpayer money to increasingly improbable developer fantasies, as the City government more and more explicitly turns its back on residential family neighborhoods in pursuit of high density construction, the more solid blue residents are rising in protest.

The NYT is of course pushing the alarmist message of polarization but I wonder.  I have long argued that the appearance of polarization is strictly a phenomenon of journalists living in deep blue cities and not having a native understanding of just how mixed and tolerant suburbs, smaller cities and towns and rural areas can be.  Where politics is not the be-all and end-all but a mere seasoning and where human relations are far more important.

Given their methodology, the NYT has the data to provide a an overall index of polarization by state or region, but they do not.  I can only suppose that it is because polarization is far less of an issue outside of Blue Machine cities where journalists live.  I would hypothesize that probably at least 80% of Americans live in an area where neighbors within a one or two mile distance are probably within the boundaries of 60:40 for either party.  And that is not taking into account for the fact that at least a third of the population are independent, voting for whichever party is of greatest relevance to their personal objectives and sense of priorities.

Polarization -  it really is a condition of big city living by deeply political journalists.  It is not a common plague to which most people are susceptible.