Скачать или смотреть The Veil of Elections: Assessing the Causal Effect of Homophily on Partisan Segregation

Tea Talk September 10, 2025
Residential partisan segregation—i.e., the tendency for partisans to live near co-partisans and far from anti-partisans—is an extensive and accelerating trend in the United States. Why partisans are sorting geographically is not yet understood and understanding the causal drivers behind increasing partisan segregation in the United States remains challenging. Leveraging over a decade of voter registration records and millions of residential property deeds, we introduce the "veil of elections" methodology, inspired by the "veil of darkness" approach used in racial profiling studies, to assess whether partisan homophily—i.e., preferences to live near politically like-minded neighbors—causally influences partisan residential sorting. Specifically, we exploit heightened visibility of neighborhood partisanship during Presidential election seasons, hypothesizing that homebuyers’ preferences for co-partisan neighborhoods become more actionable due to campaign signage. Our preliminary results are consistent with small effects of partisan homophily on homebuying decisions, with observed effects varying based on election competitiveness, buyer partisanship, and timing assumptions. Overall our results suggest that if elections do in fact increase the visibility of a neighborhood's partisanship, then partisan homophily has a modest effect on partisan segregation.