User:Prabina1/Recognizing MAUP in Research-Prabina K. Dhungana

Since 1976, there has been a trend where Republicans and Democrats have become geographically segregated. During the 1976 election between only about 26% of the voters lived in landslide counties where as by 2004 presidential election this number increase to  about 48%. As a result the author wanted to study the cause of migratory habits of people and to understand  why people chose to live in certain areas. To understand this, they devised 3 tests to determine if politically like minded people  were coming together.

In the test "Does like attract like?", it was found that a county with a particular political leaning  attracts more people of the same political leaning and over time the margin becomes wider and in some cases this margin widened to an overwhelming 20%.This phenomenon called tipping has being seen more republican counties than Democratic counties.

In the second test " Does Geography Matters?", they  found, a significant difference in the life style and beliefs of people living in a solidly Republican versus a solidly democratic county. In a strongly republican county, 57% of the people were married where this number was only 47% in a strongly Democratic county. 47% of the people living in Republican counties went to church at least once a weak whereas the No. was 34% in democratic counties.48% of people living in Democratic county strongly accept homosexuality whereas only 21% of people living accepted homosexuality. The difference in opinion between the supporters of the republican and democratic parties can be seen in the issues like gun control, labor union membership, the war in Iraq, the use of the USA PATRIOT ACT and the use of military force in carrying out of foreign policy etc.

In the 3rd test called "The Hindsight Experiment", they researched to see how people were aligning themselves into their politically groups in the past. They found that people have started becoming more rigid in their political ideology over the past years. Also, people with a bachelors degree or higher have sided with the Democratic party. On the other hand Republican counties gained more church goers where as the Democratic counties lost more in this aspect. Although all counties gained more foreign born residents the counties with Democratic landsides were those which saw a spike in these foreign born residents.

This research also showed that communities with landslide majorities have a different kind of politics than those with mixed outcomes. For example, the chair of the local democratic party  living in overwhelming republican area in Texas didn't want to be openly identified as a democrat. In another instance, a women moved to Dallas because she felt more at home politically there.

The research also found that last political majorities have a very strong effect over the minorities. For example, minorities didn't turn up to vote for fear of social sanctions, causing them to withdraw from all forms of public life. In this way when minorities don't participate in any kind of social and political activities, the results of the data can be skewed enabling MAUP.

The author also found that individual opinions of people were affected by their political leaning. The individual opinion of the people with a liberal background were more liberal on issues like global warming gay marriage, and affirmative action than their conservative counterparts. When these people were grouped into homogenous group of like minded people, the views of the liberals and the conservatives became more extreme as the discussion grew longer. From this example we can infer that there can be a bias when conducting surveys in areas with a certain political leaning thereby resulting in the possibility of MAUP.

Since the ideological divide between the parties has widened and people of similar  political ideology are trending to move into areas with people of similar ideology, there is possibility of this situation being manipulated by politicians to the advantage of their parties. As a result could lead to the possibility of MAUP existing in these circumstances.