Red, Blue, and Purple America

As America rushes headlong into a dramatic campaign season, it is clear that these consequential contests—and the ones that follow—will be hugely influenced by recent changes in the nation’s makeup. Red, Blue, and Purple America provides a clear and nuanced understanding of the geographic and demographic changes that are transforming the United States and how that transformation is reshaping politics, for the 2008 elections and beyond. The invaluable result is a detailed picture of current trends as well as a clear-eyed assessment of how they will shape American politics and policy during the next two decades. An elite group of demographers, geographers, and political scientists analyze rapidly changing patterns of immigration, settlement, demography, family structure, and religion. Each analysis describes one major trend and assesses its likely impact on politics, for the 2008 elections but for the long term as well. The authors then lay out the most likely implications for public policy. In doing so, they show how these trends have shaped the Red and Blue divisions we are familiar with today, and how the developments might break apart those blocs in new and surprising ways.

Ruy Teixeira is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, as well as a fellow of the New Politics Institute. He is the coauthor, with John B. Judis, of The Emerging Democratic Majority, selected by the Economist as one of the best books of 1992. He is also the author of The Disappearing American Voter (Brookings, 1992) and coauthor, with Joel Rogers, of America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters (Brookings, 2001).Teixeira and Karlyn Bowman codirect the joint Brookings--American Enterprise Institute project on "The Future of Red, Blue and Purple America," from which this book emerges.