The Hamilton County precinct map from the 2016 presidential election looks a lot like a strawberry danish with blueberry jam in the center.
The blue-shaded precincts inside the Chattanooga city limits voted solidly for Democrat Hillary Clinton, while the vast outer suburbs, often called exurbs, and rural areas turned red for Republican Donald Trump.
There’s nothing like a presidential election to expose a region’s true political colors.
And apparently, we tend to stick closely to those who think like we do.
As the Washington Post put it in a 2014 article examining the trends in a Pew Research Center survey, “We live in places that reflect our values, and our values are influenced by where we live.”