Political Sorting: Americans Moving to Places That Match Their Views

Paul Chabot is an entrepreneur, and his business is moving conservatives into more conservative neighborhoods. Like the founder of Hair Club for Men, Chabot shares his clients' experience. He's not just the founder of Conservative Move; he personally moved from California's Inland Empire to McKinney, Texas, in hopes of finding like-minded people and a local government that would enact policies consistent with his beliefs. "They would give more rights to an illegal immigrant rather than treat their own a lot better," Chabot tells Emily Badger of the New York Times.

The idea of political sorting is not new. Bill Bishop's work on the subject speculated on how like-minded people could increase partisanship and make local elections less competitive. Badger explains that while movers often don't think of their relocations as political, they are more likely to move or change their addresses to "congressional districts that [match] their self-reported ideology."