ABSTRACT
This chapter operationalizes polarization using the level of partisan competition within the municipality, which is consistent with the notion that the electorate in the US has become more ideologically unified into opposing political parties. It utilizes the two-party vote total for the Michigan State Board of Education within each community in the 2006 election. The chapter sorts municipalities by their party competitiveness, which is simply the difference in the vote share between the Democratic and Republican parties. Then, it constructs two models: one that includes only polarized communities and one that examines only those that are non-polarized. This resulted in data from 126 respondents in the polarized communities. Finally, the chapter includes two demographic variables that are hypothesized to be related to our dependent variables: the average per capita income of a municipality's residents and the homogeneity of a community, measured as the percentage of the population identified as White.
