Book: "The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart," Bill Bishop

• “In 1976, less than a quarter of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide. By 2004, nearly half of all voters lived in landslide counties.”
• “The Big Sort, then, is not simply about political partisanship, about how Americans vote every couple of years. It is a division in what they value, in how they worship, and in what they expect out of life.”
• “The old systems of order – around land, family, class, tradition, and religious denomination – gave way. They were replaced over the next thirty years with a new order based on individual choice. Today we seek our own kind in like-minded churches, like-minded neighborhoods, and like-minded sources of news and entertainment.”
• “Unsurpassed prosperity had set people free – free to think, speak, move, and drift. Unsurpassed prosperity had enriched Americans – and it had loosened long-established social moorings.”
• “The more educated American become – and the richer – the less likely they are to discuss politics with those who have different points of view, [Diana] Mutz wrote [in “Hearing the Other Side.”]
• “We have migrated into ever-narrower communities and churches and political groups…We have replaced a belief in a nation with a trust in ourselves and our carefully chosen surroundings…In thts time, we have reshaped our economies, transformed our businesses, both created and decimated our cities, and altered institutions of faith and fellowship that have withstood centuries. Now more isolated than ever in our private lives cocooned with our fellows, we approach public life the sensibility of customers who are always right. “Tailor-made” has worked so well for industry and social networking sites, for subdivisions and churches, we expect it from our government too. But democracy doesn’t seem to work that way.”
• “In 1976, the average winning margin in the 50 states and Washington, DC, was 10 percentage points…In 2008, the average winning margin…was 17.4 percentage points.”