The big ideological geographic sort? The role of ideological discrimination, social capital and social whispers in deciding where to live

Research on partisan geographic sorting has examined whether people's ideological preferences affect their decision about where to live. Part of the discussion is whether residential decisions are shaped by ideological discrimination or are a by-product of non-political attributes covarying with partisan preferences. However, previous works are limited in at least two ways. First, they are mostly circumscribed to the U.S. context, where residential mobility tends to be higher than elsewhere. Second, they mainly focus on the effects of the partisan composition of the destination area, neglecting other factors, such as the ideological composition of the municipality or its social capital. This article contributes to the literature by studying the Spanish context and improving existing indicators of sorting drivers. Using a conjoint design with a representative sample of the Spanish population, we show that the ideological makeup of a future residence significantly drives acceptance of living there. We find some willingness to trade off living in ideologically different areas for lower housing costs or greater privacy, especially among left-wing individuals. Our findings have important implications for understanding ideology's role in the “big geographic sort”.