Partisan Borders: Political Ideology and Frictions in Interstate Job-to-Job Flows

Abstract

This paper investigates how political partisanship imposes interstate job-to-job flow frictions in the United States. I find that interstate job flows are significantly lower between politically misaligned states. Exploiting close presidential elections as a quasi-experiment, I show that job flows to destination states decline by 4.8% quarterly when a candidate narrowly wins in the destination state, breaking previous political alignment between origin and destination states. Sub-period analysis reveals that partisan barriers to interstate job flows were modest in 2001–2011 but have intensified dramatically since 2012, consistent with deepening polarization in the U.S. These partisan-induced mobility frictions generate a feedback loop where partisanship reduces interstate job moves, leading to deeper sorting. That, in turn, further intensifies polarization and discourages interstate job mobility. This mechanism links ideology-driven labor mobility frictions to the long-run partisan landscape of the country.