What marks the map is not what moved it

Each point is one neighborhood measure. Horizontal: its turnout-weighted correlation with the 2020 two-party margin (the static level). Vertical: its correlation with the 2016→2020 Democratic swing (the motion). Color marks the family.

Takeaway: bonding capital sits on the left wall — it stamps the standing red–blue map but is inert on the swing. Bridging capital sits along the top — near-zero on the level, yet it is what moved between 2016 and 2020. The two glues occupy different quadrants.

Bonding — inward ties Bridging — cross-class ties Retirement economy
Bonding/bridging measures are from the Social Capital Atlas (Chetty et al. 2022); the retirement-economy measures are from the Social Security Administration and the American Community Survey. Social Capital Atlas measures cover fewer neighborhoods (n ≈ 18–23k) than the SSA/ACS measures (n ≈ 29k); see notes. Source: see notes.

Bridging capital is not just income in disguise

Economic connectedness against the 2020 level and the 2016→2020 swing, raw (hollow) and net of median household income (filled). The line is the distance income explains.

Takeaway: on the swing, connectedness survives the income control — from +0.385 to a still-substantial +0.199. On the level, the already-tiny link does not merely shrink; it flips, from +0.029 to −0.151. The bridging signal lives in the motion, not the standing map.

Partial correlations are weighted-residual correlations net of median_income (n = 18,826). Source: see notes.