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...straighten them out. conclusion would certainly come as a surprise to those legislators who busily draw redistricting boundaries once (and now twice) a decade to ensure the electoral fortunes of incumbents in their own party.
Klinkner uses a series of articles we published in the Austin American-Statesman as a foil for his analysis. (The series is ongoing; reports so far have appeared April 4, April 8, May 2, and May 30.) Since our results and conclusions appear to be at variance with his, we feel obligated to respond.
Whether or not the American electorate is polarized at all levels is a contested issue (for a quick update on the complexities of the argument, and how muddled the issues can become, see John Tierney, "A Nation Divided? Who Says?" New York Times, Section 4, page 1, 4, Sunday, June 13, 2004). Our principal interest has been in trying to understand whether Americans are sorting themselves locally in ways that have political consequences. We are interested in why some states have become battleground states in presidential contests, whereas in others the presidential outcome has become increasingly predictable in recent election cycles. Determining whether geographic polarization in presidential elections has other political consequences is another issue, but Klinkner's conclusion is that nothing exceptional is happening at the presidential level.
First, a note on method. Our analysis considers only Republican and Democratic votes at the county level. Klinkner finds a difference in our computations and his because he includes votes for third party candidates. We don't. His attribution of error is really just a difference in method. Had he read the explanation on methods in the newspaper, he would have realized this was the source of his confusion. There is no error in our finding that the percentage of Americans living in counties with landslide votes in presidential elections increased dramatically from 1976 to 2000.
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Counter response from Klinkner to Bishop and Cushing., June 14, 2004
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