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Abstract
Individual political behavior can be influenced by a person's location. In this book, I demonstrate how the arrangement of groups in geographic space affects individual political behaviors such as voter participation and vote choice. Using racial groups in the United States, I show that the salience of a group is a function of three dimensions of spatial geography: the size of the group, the proximity of the group to the observer, and the spatial concentration of the group. Increased levels of these dimensions increase the salience of a group, which, in turn, affects individual political behavior. I use large-scale survey data, election returns, voter lists, and geographic data, in addition to a field experiment and a natural experiment to test my claim. I demonstrate that the influence of these three dimensions, which I call spatial impact, is an important determinant of individual behavior and powerfully contributes to the structure of American politics.
