Political Bubble - Spy tool

[Steve Smith]

the NYT sent me this link to help me recognize if I live in a political
bubble:

   
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/30/opinion/politics/bubble-politics.html

After checking a few "neighborhoods" for their "political temperature"
and getting good *aggregate* statistics over a pretty large area I
realized while I couldn't zoom in conventionally on the maps they
generate I *could* do a screen grab and zoom in on pixels... it turns
out that at least for the 4 households on MY tiny lane in the middle of
nowhere that I could see what I already suspected:  My two
suspected-to-be-conservative neighbors are in fact registered
Republican/Republican and Republican/Independent while the known highly
liberal at the end is registered Democrat and my own household shows
Democrat/Independent (which is the only one I have ground truth on).

While I suppose voter registration IS public information, it felt pretty
invasive that I could do address level snooping so easily!

Neither of my Republican(ish) neighbors put out Trump signs in 2016 or
now and we (and the woman on the end) didn't put out
Hillary/Bernie/Biden signs, but we *do* have very small Buttegieg and
Bernie and Biden/Harris stickers on two of our vehicles.  I suspect my
Red neighbors know that we are Blue and I suspect my Independed neighbor
in an otherwise Red household leans Red while it is fair to guess that I
lean Blue with my very Blue partner (though by some measure I lean all
the way OVER the blue horizon)

If I were casing houses, I might find this resource useful.    I'd put
money on there being a strong bias for the Red homes having one or more
firearms for home-protection and many of the Blue ones having either no
fire-arms or fire-arms NOT locked and loaded next to the bed.    On one
hand I suppose that means I might expect to score some expensive weapons
(with a big stock of ammo?) in one type of house but probably to make
sure nobody is home before I go a Burgling, but on the other I suppose I
might feel safer with a home-invasion of the other type of house, though
if it's fancy guns I'm hoping to score, I might be disappointed, I might
have to settle for a big library and maybe some fancier
computer/electronics equipment?

When I lived here alone, my house would have come up purple
(independent) which might be the best of both worlds?  Is "independent"
code for Libertarian or Green?  Either way, it's not the owner or the
gun he might have they need to watch out for, it's the somewhat
neurotic, over-protective, fear aggressive dog they really don't want to
trigger.  She is not registered to vote.

The best surprise for me was how Many "independent" (technically
non-affiliated, NOT registered to the Independent Party) voters there
were *everywhere* I looked.   I suspect this might reflect disaffected
Republicans who can't stomach registering Democrat but (for the moment)
can't stomach the other major party either?

Time for both parties to split, and better yet a more refined voting
system where more than 2 parties *can* thrive so we can see some
diversity of implied opinion.  I'd probably register Green-Anarchist
while Mary would probably register Socialist, or both of us would
register simply never-Trumper (also quite ambiguous).




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