Who are the most prejudiced people in America? To save us all from boorish dinner guests, the Atlantic had a polling and analytics firm rank U.S. counties based on partisan prejudice. The results, published Monday, may surprise you. It reports:
Among other questions, surveyors asked 2,000 adults how well the words “selfish,” “compassionate,” or “patriotic” describe Democrats or Republicans and how they’d feel if a Republican or Democrat married into the family. Using that information, they projected demographic profiles onto the rest of the American population.
The most intolerant county, according to the study, is not some right-wing pocket of Alabama. It’s on the East Coast.
Residents of Suffolk County are metropolitan and educated, but they don’t get out much: 90 percent of couples seem to share the same political leaning, and 80 percent of neighborhoods do, too.
One of the most tolerant counties in America is in upstate New York. President Trump won Jefferson County by 20 percentage points in 2016. It’s a conservative area, but its residents don’t care too much whether their daughter marries a Democrat.
So, if you want to enjoy your dinner parties, it looks like we may have a fairly easy fix. Start getting to know people whose opinions are different from yours. And stay away from Boston.
