Most Americans say they would prefer to live in communities that have political, racial, religious and economic diversity, but when the "facts on the ground" are analyzed, the data suggest Americans may "talk one way, but behave another," according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
Six in ten Americans said in a survey conducted Oct. 3-19 that they wanted to live in a diverse community. Sixty-three percent said they would rather live in a community where there was a mix of political views, 65 percent wanted to live in a racially diverse community, 59 percent want to live in a community where there are many people with different religions, and 61 percent expressed a preference for communities where there was a mix of people from different socioeconomic classes.
Fifty-six percent said they'd prefer living somewhere with a small rather than large immigrant population.
Against this, Pew contrasted the results in the presidential race where 48 percent of the voters - double the number of 1976 - lived in counties that went for Barack Obama or John McCain by 20 points or more. Pew said, "It's not clear whether this residential political polarization is a result of explicit decisions by people who move or a byproduct of other demographic trends. But either way, the pattern runs contrary to the attitudes expressed by a sizable majority of the public" about diversity.
The Pew report also drew on Census data to contrast what respondents said in the survey to patterns of where people of different ethnic, racial and socioeconomic status actually live. There's a lot of caveats that Pew puts in this analysis, which you can find in the full article.
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