Geographical Polarization of Party Supporters: Residential Choices and the Self-Selection into Politically Compatible Regions in Germany

There is a broad controversy regarding people’s preference to live among politically like-minded others, causing a polarized political geography driven by selective residential mobility and the spatial concentration of political beliefs. However, current research on this issue has predominantly focused on democracies or referendums with majority voting systems and has come to contradictory conclusions. This study aims to close this gap for multi-party systems by investigating the extent to which party supporters in Germany sort themselves into politically more compatible regions when changing their place of residence. Using individual survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and official regional statistics provided by the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs, and Spatial Development (BBSR), logistic multilevel analyses are conducted for German NUTS-3 regions. An expected outcome is that party supporters move to regions where their preferred party enjoys electoral success and their ideological worldview is no longer in conflict with the region. Furthermore, it is expected that distance and differences in urbanization between origin and destination regions are central to residential choices, with a positive relationship in favor of politically congruent regions. This analysis not only sheds light on the impact of political circumstances as pull factors in residential decisions but also explores the transferability of theoretical considerations on geographic sorting to proportional representation systems. The findings bear implications for democratic coexistence, suggesting that its core values, such as consensus and cooperation, are compromised when geographic polarization and tensions between politically homogeneous regions contribute to societal divisions.