The Big Sort

No, We Didn’t: America Hasn't Changed as Much as Tuesday’s Results Would Indicate

Bill Bishop — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:22:00 GMT

One week after a historic presidential campaign that ended with the election of a man who billed himself as a post-partisan candidate of a unified America, this country is more divided than it was four or eight years ago. Or, less abstractly, while some...(read more)

It's Time Now To Allow Politicians To Do Their Jobs

Bill Bishop — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:20:00 GMT

Anthropologist E.E. Evans-Prichard studied the Nuer, a pastoral people living in the Upper Nile region of Africa, herders who moved with their animals to the tune of the region's rivers. In flood times, Nuer tribes retreated to higher ground, and when...(read more)

Still Undecided? Ask Your Neighbor.

Bill Bishop — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:14:00 GMT

Undecideds don't vote on issues. If they were interested in issues—or even in the personalities of candidates—they wouldn't be undecideds. "They are not radical, not liberal, not conservative, not reactionary," C. Wright Mills wrote in 1953, "they are...(read more)

How Running a Campaign Is Like Building a Megachurch

Bill Bishop — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:47:00 GMT

The model for the modern political campaign is the evangelical megachurch. This isn't a partisan observation. Both George Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama adopted the basic organizing techniques that many ministers have been using since the 1970s to grow...(read more)

America's Partisan Reading List

Bill Bishop — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:18:00 GMT

Before last week, every time Valdis Krebs mapped the reading habits of those buying political books through Amazon.com, he found a few volumes read by both the left and the right . Krebs used data from Amazon to discover the patterns among readers of...(read more)

The Stuff in Your Bedroom Signals How You Vote

Bill Bishop — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:46:00 GMT

When Sam Gosling studied the differences between liberal and conservative college students, he and his colleagues went snooping for cleaning supplies. In the dorm rooms of conservatives, they found more cans of Ajax and ironing boards. In an unpublished...(read more)

Which Side Is Trying To Steal the Election? The Other One.

Bill Bishop — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:39:00 GMT

My wife coined the term prespiracy to describe a conspiracy that had not yet occurred. It's a future conspiracy imagined into reality. Well, the prespiracies have started. Republicans are convinced ACORN has hijacked the election by registering legions...(read more)

An Election Story for Those Who Like To Watch

Bill Bishop — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:05:00 GMT

Enough already with the words. Think of this as The Big Sort scorecard for the election, several different ways of seeing how the geographic clustering of like-minded citizens plays out in presidential elections. First, the sort itself . Here we compare...(read more)

Spank Your Kids? You Likely Vote Republican.

Bill Bishop — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:11:00 GMT

While the rest of political journalism continues to parse the electorate by ways of life described by the U.S. census— Matt Bai gets up close and chummy with "white guys" in the Times over the weekend—we at The Big Sort will consider two measures that...(read more)

Why the Workplace Is Essential to Democracy

Bill Bishop — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:19:00 GMT

"Jennifer" called into the NPR show "Talk of the Nation" last Thursday to describe a wonderful democratic experiment she and her husband were conducting at the business they own in North Carolina. Their firm has about 100 workers, and she and her husband...(read more)

This Campaign Has Gone Positively 19th Century

Bill Bishop — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:08:00 GMT

This election is getting out of hand. For one rally, I read, the locals rigged up six horses to a wagon big enough to carry a pipe organ and a glee club with 40 singers. Was this a prop for another Barack Obama mega-rally? Or maybe a Sarah Palin revival?...(read more)

Answers of a Political Sort

Chad Lorenz — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:45:00 GMT

Bill has just finished a vigorous online chat with readers, and here's the transcript of the discussion. See what readers have to say about the diversity of political leanings in Alaska or the attitudes of people in the suburbs toward urban life. They...(read more)

Questions of a Political Sort

Chad Lorenz — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:44:00 GMT

"Big Sort" blogger Bill Bishop will chat online with readers about political segregation and voter trends on Thursday, Oct. 16. Follow the chat starting at noon at Washingtonpost.com or pose an advance question now ....(read more)

Where Are All The Good Men?

Bill Bishop — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:50:00 GMT

Political polling parses data according to broad demographic categories—by sex, age, education, race, religion. The polls have been run this way for years, which makes it easy to compare results from election to election. It doesn't matter that these...(read more)

Enough Already With Political Categories Like "White Women"

Bill Bishop — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:05:00 GMT

Let's get something straight. There is no "women's vote." Women vote, of course. But reporters write about the "voting bloc" of white women as if it has meaning. It doesn't. Elections aren't about demography. They are about ways of life. Marketing people...(read more)

Extremism at McCain Rallies Comes Naturally

Bill Bishop — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:50:00 GMT

French students who disliked America (and loved Charles de Gaulle) were once asked to talk about the United States for an hour or two. At the end of the session, conducted as part of experiments in the 1960s, the students disliked America — and loved...(read more)

Learning a Lesson From the "Redneck Caucus"

Bill Bishop — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker went to "central casting" in the spring of '06 to find the candidate who could win in Bush-red communities. Goldberg recounted a stilted encounter between the Kerrys (John and Teresa Heinz) and a Missouri hog farmer,...(read more)

Realignment? Nope. Just More of The Same.

Bill Bishop — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:09:00 GMT

A few days after the 2006 election, the Washington Post announced , " 'God gap' in American politics has narrowed substantially." By 2006, so went the theory, evangelicals were disgruntled with George W. Bush. All the fundamentalists, charismatics, megachurchers,...(read more)

If This Is a "Change" Election, Then What's Changed?

Bill Bishop — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:56:00 GMT

Let's consider what's not new in this election. There's a lot. The last five or six elections have been pushed along by trends that have been in place since the mid-1970s. Despite the extraordinary circumstances this year, the basic political contours...(read more)

What Change Means: It's Not Policy; It's Process

Bill Bishop — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:24:00 GMT

"Palin and Biden Stake Their Claims on Change," rang the lead headline in the Times after the vice-presidential debate. Who could blame them? With several wars, Great Depression II, a blistering civil conflict in Pakistan, and European economic collapse,...(read more)