ABSTRACT
Most elections, both for the composition of a legislative body and for a single legislator, are contested across a territory that comprises a number of - if not a myriad - separate places. Much media and other commentary on voter behavior, and some academic studies, therefore treat members of the electorate as isolated atoms who make decisions on whether to vote and who or what to vote for without any reference to the places where they live and the people they interact with there. A very substantial component of the literature on voting patterns and local contexts concerns what has become known very widely as the neighborhood effect. The tendency for people to align their party support with that of their conversation partners is at the heart of the classic neighborhood effect, therefore, and research shows that people who talk together do, to a noticeable degree, vote together, as a result of conversion processes.
