Who is Your Preferred Neighbor? Partisan Residential Preferences and Neighborhood Satisfaction
Published online on April 25, 2013
Abstract
Do people specifically seek to live among political co-partisans when they relocate? Does the partisan composition of the neighborhood affect their level of residential satisfaction? Drawing on survey data and a survey-embedded experiment, I find that people have a clear preference for co-partisans. Both Republican and Democrat identifiers prefer more co-partisans in their neighborhood. Although the preference is not the primary factor in deciding where to settle, the partisan composition of a neighborhood does affect an individual’s sense of neighborhood satisfaction. Results from a survey-embedded experiment show that respondents’ subjective satisfaction is sensitive to objective facts about their neighborhood. Respondents’ satisfaction slightly decreases when told their neighborhood has a higher presence of members of the opposite party than perceived.