The Great Sort's Result: The Middle is Dead in Congress. Really Dead.

The "Great Sort" at the local and state level, not the evils of redistricting, has changed our government — and, more importantly, our national discussions on all issues. And I do mean **all** issues, because studies show left / right; progressive / liberal / libertarian / conservative; secular / religious; North / South / East / West; and other ways to group people correlate to music choices, television viewing, trust in government, and much more.

How can we prove that redistricting isn't the villain behind our political discourse? Easily: we look at the Senate, which should represent entire states, not statistically modeled and gerrymandered districts. Yet, the Senate, supposedly the great deliberative body of our government, has become little more than yet another left-right battleground.

The ideological middle is dead in Congress. Really dead.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/10/the-ideological-middle-is-dead-in-congress-really-dead/
BY CHRIS CILLIZZA
April 10 at 11:08 am

More intriguing — and harder to explain — is how the middle has dropped out of the Senate, which is not subject to redistricting and, because Senators represent entire states, self-sorting should be less powerful.

Well more than half of the Senate fit between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat in 1982. For the last two years, there has not been a single Republican with a more liberal voting record than any Democrat and not a single Democrat with a more conservative voting record than any Republican. Not one.

Personally, and purely anecdotally, I have experienced the Great Sort. More illustrative, I've been a part of it. The result is that entire regions are growing more homogenous, with islands of urban progressives dotting a nation of conservative rural and libertarian exurb voters. You can draw rings around many cities, with the "beyond" areas socially, fiscally, and internationally conservative. The outer rings are more libertarian, with white-collar workers who are fiscal conservatives, social liberals, and foreign policy isolationists. And then, you have the cities, where progressive ideologies hold sway.

The result is that states are sorting based on which states are rural and which are more urbanized. Red gets redder, blue gets bluer, at least in terms of election results. Even a slight majority of one extreme or the other leads to the election of Senators representing polarized views and depending on voters from their individuals states' majorities. Senators now ignore constituents with moderate views and those unlikely to ever support the Senators' parties.

As Chris Cillizza observes:

Taken together, there are four -- FOUR -- members of the ideological middle out of the 535 members of the House and Senate combined. That comes out to approximately .7 percent of the entire Congress. In 1982, by way of comparison, more than 75 percent of Members of Congress were part of the ideological middle.

So, in the last 30 years, the middle has lost 74 percent of its membership in Congress. And when the middle is represented by less than one percent of the entire Congress, it's not an exaggeration to say the center is gone.

I am a exurban resident. I live in a single-family home, in a limited access (single-entry, no gate) neighborhood, among college-educated white-collar professionals much like my wife and me. We are the muddled middle, unrepresented by the parties, unrepresented at the local, state, or federal levels.

Sorting occurs, naturally, in most ways. We select careers that represent our ideologies. We select workplaces that are comfortable. We choose to live among people at least more like ourselves than unlike us.

I'd be unhappy in a city, and I'd be unhappy in complete isolation. I want my space, my house, my land, but I don't want to be entirely cut-off from the comforts of the suburbs. My ideology also reflects that desire to balance independence and community.

Where I teach, and what I teach, also represent my ideological biases. I teach in a business school, at a university known for technology and research. My workplace reflects my views on work; even the school motto fits my ideology: "My Heart is the Work." That's not an institutional motto most of my colleagues in the liberal arts would embrace with zeal.

How sorted is your life? It might be more sorted than you realize.