Social Context and Local Political Knowledge

Abstract

In this article, we adopt a social contextual approach to examine how knowledge about local politics varies both across and within cities, arguing that certain spatial and demographic features of neighborhoods will be associated with patterns of knowledge. To test these claims, we draw on a novel dataset of roughly 3,000 Americans, with two features making it particularly appropriate for studying local political knowledge. First, the survey presents respondents with a battery of political knowledge questions tailored to the individual's city. Second, the survey samples individuals from 20 cities which are collectively representative of the universe of medium-size and large American cities. Using these data, we analyze both individual and contextual explanations for local political knowledge — and compare those findings to patterns of national political knowledge. We find that social context influences local knowledge — but not national knowledge — most prominently through the age of neighborhood housing stock.