Summary of Bill Bishop's The Big Sort

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I heard from LaHonda Jo Morgan, who lived in Wauconda, Washington, a one-building town about 150 miles northwest of Spokane. She was convinced that Wauconda remained on the map simply because mapmakers didn’t want to leave any empty space.

#2 Being a political minority can be uncomfortable and scary. In 2000, more than eight out of ten voters in Gillespie County, Texas, voted for Bush. Two years later, Democrats prepared a float for the Fourth of July parade in Fredericksburg, but no one wanted to ride it.

#3 Voting records are not checked before houses are bought, as it is simple to figure out where a person will vote simply by looking at their home.

#4 Some people are already moving to avoid being surrounded by Republicans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822539921

IRB Media

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Insights on Bill Bishop's The Big Sort

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I heard from LaHonda Jo Morgan, who lived in Wauconda, Washington, a one-building town about 150 miles northwest of Spokane. She was convinced that Wauconda remained on the map simply because mapmakers didn’t want to leave any empty space.

#2

Being a political minority can be uncomfortable and scary. In 2000, more than eight out of ten voters in Gillespie County, Texas, voted for Bush. Two years later, Democrats prepared a float for the Fourth of July parade in Fredericksburg, but no one wanted to ride it.

#3

Voting records are not checked before houses are bought, as it is simple to figure out where a person will vote simply by looking at their home.

#4

Some people are already moving to avoid being surrounded by Republicans.

#5

In the United States, people rarely change their party affiliation once they decide they are Democrats or Republicans. The parties represent ways of life, and people typically choose the party that most closely reflects their own sense of group self-conception.

#6

The tone of political discourse has worsened since the 1960s. More common is discord than cross-pollination.

#7

Some have argued that the American public is not particularly polarized, and that the media oversimplifies political differences.

#8

The abortion question is a great example of how the middle is supposedly wide and the fringe is supposedly narrow. However, a late 2005 poll from Cook/RT Strategies showed that the majority of Americans were in the middle when it came to abortion: they were neither strongly pro-life nor strongly pro-choice.

#9

In the 2006 midterm elections, American voters split very sharply on the war in Iraq, but those divisions extended to most other issues. Only 16 percent of Democrats supported a constitutional ban on gay marriage, while 69 percent of Republicans were strongly pro-choice.

#10

There are two explanations given for why America is so polarized: Gerrymandering, which creates overwhelmingly partisan districts, and the spread of conservative propaganda and money, which creates an interlocking structure of propaganda and money that moves the Republican Party to the right.

#11

After each of the last three redistricting cycles, there were no immediate jumps in lopsided districts. If legislative gerrymandering had