Experienced partisan segregation across patterns of mobility behavior in US cities

2026-09-16

AI Summary

研究结合美国11个大都市区的高分辨率匿名移动数据和选区级投票结果，分析了日常移动行为对经历党派隔离的影响。

Abstract

Residential and social sorting along political lines structure Americans' daily interactions, often limiting encounters with opposing viewpoints. Here, we combine high-resolution anonymized mobility data from 11 major U.S. metropolitan areas with precinct-level voting results to quantify and examine individuals' experienced partisan segregation in urban areas. We find that residential context provides a strong baseline for political exposure, but experienced partisan segregation is also shaped by everyday mobility behavior, since individuals living in similar residential environments can experience different levels of partisan segregation depending on their daily routines. In particular, individuals who travel farther encounter more politically diverse environments, especially in highly segregated areas, indicating that mobility range moderates the relationship between residential and experienced segregation, while exploring a wider range of places does not reduce partisan segregation and may even reinforce it. Moreover, place segregation largely reflects political geography, yet categories of points of interest have distinct segregation patterns, with community places and social businesses tending to attract more left-leaning visitors, reflecting visitation patterns rather than local accessibility alone. Our findings show that experienced partisan segregation extends beyond residential geography and is also associated with the mobility behavior and visitation patterns that structure people's daily lives.

Problem

• partisan segregation
• mobility behavior
• residential context

Innovation

• partisan segregation
• mobility behavior
• political exposure
• voting results
• points of interest