And the Most Politically Polarized City in Georgia Is …
According to a new report by CrowdPAC, Georgia’s most polarized city is Cumming, while the least polarized city is Decatur.
CrowdPAC ranks political candidates and officeholders on a 20 point scale allows up to 10 points on the liberal side and 10 points on the conservative side. The organization uses candidates’ statements, voting records, and political contributions in scoring each candidate. For example, Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton’s score is 6.9L, while Republican Donald Trump scores an 8.3C.
To determine polarization, CrowdPAC examined political contributions from cities with more than 1000 donors since 2008. A liberal and conservative score was tallied for each city, and the ideological gap between the two was determined by the difference between the two scores. A larger gap indicates a more polarized city, however the gap does not indicate whether a given city is more conservative or more liberal.
The table below shows the rankings of Georgia cities among 378 measured across the country:
Rank | City | Percent Liberal | Percent Conservative | Ideological Gap |
13 | Cumming | 40.3% | 59.7% | 8.34 |
24 | Savannah | 48.7% | 51.3% | 8.13 |
29 | Fayetteville | 55.8% | 44.2% | 8.07 |
31 | Roswell | 52.5% | 47.5% | 8.02 |
32 | Marietta | 49.1% | 50.9% | 8.02 |
49 | Augusta | 39.2% | 60.8% | 7.85 |
52 | Duluth | 46.8% | 53.2% | 7.83 |
54 | Alpharetta | 45.2% | 54.8% | 7.81 |
73 | Gainesville | 30.6% | 69.4% | 7.61 |
87 | Columbus | 47.8% | 52.2% | 7.53 |
105 | Macon | 46.7% | 53.3% | 7.38 |
113 | Athens | 76.7% | 23.3% | 7.34 |
160 | Atlanta | 67.5% | 32.5% | 6.95 |
321 | Decatur | 90.4% | 9.6% | 4.95 |
For the record, the most polarized city nationwide is Green Bay, Wisconsin, while the least polarized is Berkeley California.
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I don’t think “polarized” means what CrowdPAC thinks it means. I would argue it’s exactly the opposite.
I know you are just reporting the study but I do not totally understand the math they are using unless it is that new stuff they are teaching in schools. Gainesville would seem to be much less polarized than what they are stating as the gap is quite wide there, no doubt resulting from the many leading Republicans which hail from that city.
This also takes in just political donations as a measure for determining how lopsided a particular jurisdiction is in their political leanings. Fayetteville is still much more reliably conservative than the scale would suggest while no one in Georgia politics regards Columbus Georgia as a conservative bastion.
The goal of this wasn’t to measure which city was more liberal or more conservative. Instead, the goal was to determine one measure of polarization by looking at political contributions. If a city had most of its contributions to candidates on the extreme left as well as contributions to candidates on the extreme right, it would be more polarized than a city which had contributions to centrist left and centrist right candidates.