Partisan Polarization in Local Politics

Abstract

A growing body of scholarship investigates the extent to which national partisan polarization filters down to the local level. There has been little evidence, however, on: (1) the size of the local partisan divide; (2) the extent to which it varies by policy issue; and (3) how these divides compare at the elite and the mass public levels. Using responses to questions about local policy preferences from nearly a decade of nationwide surveys of mayors between 2015 and 2023 and from 25,072 members of the public in 90 cities between 2020 and 2023, we uncover notable variation in local partisan polarization across different issue areas. Elite partisan polarization is more substantial than it is among members of the public on nearly every policy issue for which we have directly comparable data. Despite this gap in polarization between elites and the public, there is also evidence of congruence: a subset of data for which we can match mayors to their own constituents on identical questions reveals that mayors take positions aligned with a majority of their constituents’ views about 69% of the time. Democratic mayors align with their Democratic constituents more than with their Republican ones, and Republican mayors do the opposite. The differences in representation for copartisans and outpartisans are greater on more polarized issues. Together, these results challenge a traditional consensus that local politics is apartisan, establish scope conditions on when partisanship might shape the policy outputs of local government, and show how partisan polarization can translate into differences in the quality of representation.