New housing developments reliably produce Republican voting enclaves

Evidence

As white flight picked up speed, the politics created by it kept pace. Taking stock of southern politics in 1996, journalists Dan Balz and Ron Brownstein noted, “Almost every new housing development rising in the suburban and exurban counties of the South represented another potential Republican enclave and a further nail in the Democrats’ coffin.” Likewise, when pollster Stanley Greenberg assessed the state of politics in 2004, he singled out “exurbia” and “the Deep South” as two persistent sources of Republican strength. With 54 percent of all American exurbs located in the South, it became clear that southern exurbs would be to twenty-first-century Republicans what the Sunbelt suburbs had been for them three decades before—an area in which key demographic groups overlapped and new political ideologies emerged. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 590

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: White flight repeated itself from suburbs into 95-percent-white exurbs — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 589; Government housing control can reduce neighborhood segregation — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1134

Broader Connections

• Government housing control can reduce neighborhood segregation #complicates (0.72) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1134