Tolerance, across the rural-urban divide

The Atlantic ran this story a few days ago, and I would have missed it and its implications for California without the California Sun's mini-feature on both.  The story is titled "The Geography of Partisan Politics," and it measures tolerance for one's political opponents at the county level.  It also features a nifty inter-active map. 

Here's the lede from The Atlantic's story, written by Amanda Ripley, Rekha Tenjarla and Angela Y. He:   

We know that Americans have become more biased against one another based on partisan affiliation over the past several decades. Most of us now discriminate against members of the other political side explicitly and implicitly—in hiring, dating, and marriage, as well as judgments of patriotism, compassion, and even physical 
attractiveness, according to recent research.

But we don’t know how this kind of stereotyping varies from place to place. Are there communities in America that are more or less politically forgiving than average? And if so, what can we learn from the outliers?

* * * 

In general, the most politically intolerant Americans, according to the analysis, tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, more urban, and more partisan themselves. This finding aligns in some ways with previous research by the University of Pennsylvania professor Diana Mutz, who has found that white, highly educated people are relatively isolated from political diversity. They don’t routinely talk with people who disagree with them; this isolation makes it easier for them to caricature their ideological opponents. (In fact, people who went to graduate school have the least amount of political disagreement in their lives, as Mutz describes in her book Hearing the Other Side.) By contrast, many nonwhite Americans routinely encounter political disagreement. They have more diverse social networks, politically speaking, and therefore tend to have more complicated views of the other side, whatever side that may be.

(emphasis mine).

As Mike McPhate of the California Sun noted, this trend plays out similarly in the Golden State, with folks on the coasts--including rural-ish coastal counties like Humboldt--being more politically intolerant than their Republican-leaning, inland neighbors, like folks from Lassen County, population   31,163, in the state's far northeast. 

Here's what Callifornia Sun wrote in their daily newsletter on March 6: 

In California, communities along the coastal stretch from Humboldt to Santa Cruz were among the most politically prejudiced. Interior parts of the state — including Lassen, Tulare, and Riverside counties — were among the least prejudiced.