Do Liberals Really Live in a Bubble? 3 Views
1. Charles Murray
Charles Murray, political scientist and W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, created something known as the "Bubble Quiz."
The Quiz involves 25 questions and a score of 0 to 100 to determine how thick a person's bubble was when it came to the immediate surrounding.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
In late December, Murray teamed up with the staff at the NewsHour feature Making Sen$e to create an online version of the bubble test, which about 142,000 people have taken.
Of the top 100 "Bubbliest Zip Codes" in the survey, the cities that had the zip codes with the thickest bubbles were Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.
Other cities with zip codes on the top hundred included Baltimore, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Providence, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
The areas with the most zip codes that had the thickest bubbles were also cities known to be predominantly politically liberal.
"The New York City area dominates, accounting for 34 zip codes in the top 100. Manhattan alone has 18 zip codes in the top 100, including all the zip codes in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side," wrote Murray.
"The zip codes surrounding San Francisco Bay constituted the next largest contribution, amounting to 29 zip codes. I have divided them somewhat arbitrarily between those associated with San Francisco and those of Silicon Valley. The Boston area had 15 zip codes and Los Angeles 8. That adds up to 86 out of 100. The entire rest of the country had just 14."
Murray did note that Washington, D.C., which is often accused of living in a bubble, only had one zip code make the top ten, concluding that "Washington zip codes aren't nearly as extreme as the elite zip codes in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and the Silicon Valley/San Francisco region."
