The relationship between offline partisan geographical segregation and online partisan segregation

TL;DR

This study compares offline and online partisan segregation in the US, revealing that offline segregation is higher than online, with Democrats more isolated than Republicans in both contexts.

Contribution

It provides the first empirical comparison of offline and online partisan segregation using a novel dataset linking voter files and Twitter networks.

Findings

Offline segregation exceeds online segregation.

Democrats are more isolated than Republicans in both settings.

Older Republicans show higher online than offline segregation.

Abstract

Social media is often blamed for the creation of echo chambers. However, these claims fail to consider the prevalence of offline echo chambers resulting from high levels of partisan segregation in the United States. Our article empirically assesses these online versus offline dynamics by linking a novel dataset of voters' offline partisan segregation extracted from publicly available voter files for 180 million US voters with their online network segregation on Twitter. We investigate offline and online partisan segregation using measures of geographical and network isolation of every matched voter-twitter user to their co-partisans online and offline. Our results show that while social media users tend to form politically homogeneous online networks, these levels of partisan sorting are significantly lower than those found in offline settings. Notably, Democrats are more isolated than Republicans in both settings, and only older Republicans exhibit higher online than offline segregation. Our results contribute to the emerging literature on political communication and the homophily of online networks, providing novel evidence on partisan sorting both online and offline.