Analysis tries to measure political polarization by county; older, highly educated urbanites seem the most intolerant

Map by The Atlantic; click on it for a larger version; click here to view the interactive version.

America has become increasingly politically polarized in recent years, some places much more so than others. The Atlantic wanted to find out which U.S. counties were most polarized, and did so with the help of polling and analytics firm PredictWise. The result is a county-level map ranking counties based on partisan prejudice and intolerance.

Some of the results were surprising. "We might expect some groups to be particularly angry at their political opponents right now. Immigrants have been explicitly targeted by the current administration, for example; they might have the most cause for partisan bias right now. But that is not what we found, report Amanda Ripley, Rekha Tenjarla, and Angela He. "In general, the most politically intolerant Americans, according to the analysis, tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, more urban, and more partisan themselves."

That tracks with previous research by University of Pennsylvania political science professor Diana Mutz; she found that highly educated white people don't frequently talk to people who disagree with them politically, so it's easier for them to mischaracterize ideological opponents. "By contrast, many nonwhite Americans routinely encounter political disagreement. They have more diverse social networks, politically speaking, and therefore tend to have more complicated views of the other side, whatever side that may be," The Atlantic reports.

The most politically intolerant county in the U.S. seems to be Suffolk County, Mass., which includes Boston. Nine out of 10 couples agree with each other politically and eight out of every 10 neighborhoods are politically homogeneous, The Atlantic reports.

With so much political polarization, "The irony is that Americans remain in agreement on many actual issues. Eight out of 10 Americans think that political correctness is a problem; the same number say that hate speech is a concern too," The Atlantic reports. "Most Americans are worried about the federal budget deficit, believe abortion should be legal in some or all cases, and want stricter gun regulation. Nevertheless, we are more and more convinced that the other side poses a threat to the country. Our stereotypes have outpaced reality, as stereotypes tend to do."