Red Fighting Blue

David A. Hopkins is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 2010. He is the co-author of Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (with Matt Grossmann, 2016) and Presidential Elections: Strategies and Structures of American Politics (with Nelson W. Polsby, Aaron Wildavsky, and Steven E. Schier, 2015). He frequently serves as an expert commentator on American politics for news media organizations such as the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Vox, and National Public Radio, and blogs regularly about current events at HonestGraft.com.

'Striking maps of 'red' and 'blue' America have become a staple of political punditry, but not a foundation for deep analysis - at least until now. In this path-breaking book, David A. Hopkins offers a powerful yet subtle account of how American electoral institutions have intensified geographic divides, and how those divides in turn shape our increasingly polarized and troubled politics. Brilliant.' Paul Pierson, University of California, Berkeley

• 1. A nation votes, Ohio decides; 2. Solid states: the regional bases of the American parties; 3. The geographic roots of party strength and cohesion; 4. Mapping the cultural battlefield: how social issues fuel the regional divide; 5. Regional polarization and partisan change in the US congress; 6. Rural red, big-city blue, and the pivotal purple midwest; 7. A locked-up nation.