Description
As migration alters the southern political landscape, partisan battle lines will be drawn between the Democrat-leaning areas of growth and the increasingly Republican areas of decline and stagnation.The Democratic Party is gaining support in the South, but the prevailing explanations of partisan shift fail to capture how and why this transformation has come about. In Movers and Stayers, Irwin Morris develops a new theory that explains the Democrats' renewed influence in the region and empirically demonstrates the influence of population growth. As Morris shows, migratory patterns play a significant role in politics, and urbanization is driving polarization in the South. Those who move to cities--the "movers" of Morris's framework--do so for jobs, and they tend to be progressive, young, well-educated Democrats. Their liberal views tend to be reinforced by the diversity of the communities in which they choose to live, and their progressivism fosters similar values among long-term residents. At the same time, "stayers" (long-term residents) absorb the consequences--or "community threat"--of this large-scale migration. While white stayers tend to become more conservative, the effects on voter behavior play out differently across racial lines. Both movers and stayers are altering the southern political landscape and polarization nationwide. Powerfully counterintuitive, Movers and Stayers provides a game-changing way of understanding one of the most confounding trends in American politics.
Table of Contents
DedicationAcknowledgmentsChapter 1: The Shifting South: Understanding Geographic Polarization and Partisan ChangeChapter 2: Migration and Partisan Change: Movers and StayersChapter 3: Population Growth and Partisan Change in the SouthChapter 4: Players in the Migration Game: Understanding the Distinctiveness of MoversChapter 5: Migrant Magnets: How Movers Change the Politics of Their New and the Politics of the Homes They Leave BehindChapter 6: How Movers Change the Politics of Their New Homes and the Places they Leave: The Cases of People of ColorChapter 7: The Special Case of Retirees: When the Elderly MoveChapter 8: Movers, Stayers, and the End of Southern Politics?EndnotesBibliography
