Aside from their political views, Joshua Fisher and Ryan Troyer have a lot in common.

In 2020, they lived across the street from each other in Sioux Falls, S.D. They are both white men of a similar age. Mr. Fisher, 42, is an auto technician; Mr. Troyer, 39, is a sanitation worker. They are both married. They both have associate degrees.

They have something else in common, too: They both moved away from Sioux Falls. Mr. Troyer left in the fall of 2021, and Mr. Fisher about a year later.

In the process, they unwittingly became a part of a nationwide pattern that could matter in a close presidential election.

They made the country more geographically polarized.

Mr. Troyer, the Republican, moved to a more Republican neighborhood. Mr. Fisher, the Democrat, moved to a more Democratic one.

Mr. Troyer, the Republican, moved to a more Republican neighborhood. Mr. Fisher, the Democrat, moved to a more Democratic one.

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This is just one pair of voters, but they are part of a trend. Consider the moves of Republicans from relatively balanced neighborhoods like theirs:

This is just one pair of voters, but they are part of a trend. Consider the moves of Republicans from relatively balanced neighborhoods like theirs:

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The picture for Democrats is almost the reverse:

The picture for Democrats is almost the reverse:

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Put the two groups together, and you see political polarization in action.

Put the two groups together, and you see political polarization in action.

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These estimates, based on a New York Times analysis of detailed public voter registration records of more than 3.5 million Americans who moved since the last presidential election, offer a new and extraordinarily detailed glimpse into one of the ways that we segregate from each other — down to the street level.

Across all movers, Republicans chose neighborhoods Donald J. Trump won by an average of 19 percentage points in 2020, while Democrats chose neighborhoods President Biden won by the opposite margin (also 19 points). In total, movers started in neighborhoods 31 percentage points apart; they ended in neighborhoods 38 points apart. Across the country, the result is a widening gap between blue neighborhoods and red ones.

The independents and unaffiliated voters in our set picked more evenly balanced neighborhoods.

The different choices that movers made are not easily explained by things like voters’ ages, race, income or if they were leaving a rural or urban area. Even when narrowing our comparisons to demographically similar pairs of people from the same kinds of neighborhoods — people like Mr. Fisher and Mr. Troyer — Democrats and Republicans still chose neighborhoods that were 24 points apart in the 2020 vote.

Our analysis suggests partisanship itself, intentional or not, plays a powerful role when Americans uproot and find a new home. And their very personal decisions about where to resettle help power the churn of migration that is continuously reshaping American life at the neighborhood level and contributing to a sense that Americans are siloed in echo chambers, online and in their daily lives.

It also has real stakes for our elections: Political scientists say the more partisan a district or state becomes, the less a candidate needs to woo voters from the other party — or, after winning, govern on their behalf.

Interviews with 20 recent movers found that, consistent with research on the subject, politics alone did not drive a decision to move. But most we spoke to said it did influence their decision, and for some it topped the must-have list — the movers in our analysis are all registered to vote, and nearly all we spoke to intended to vote on Election Day.

Impact on the 2024 election

It’s unclear how much of a direct effect movers might have on the election next week. Each cycle, the electoral landscape changes in ways that have nothing to do with moving: People turn 18; people die; people change their minds or decide not to vote. But in an extraordinarily close race, even small shifts could prove decisive.

The 3.5 million movers in our analysis are a small number compared with the 158 million people who voted in 2020, but they do help explain some recent electoral trends — like Florida’s electoral shift to the right or the gains Democrats have made in Georgia.

In all but three states that voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, more Democrats have moved in than Republicans. The reverse is true for states Mr. Trump won — in all but one, more Republicans moved in.

In 36 states, polarization happened in both directions at once: More newcomers were of the winning party, and more of those who left were of the losing party.

Our analysis is an undercount of partisan migration; it may be missing some movers who haven’t yet filed a new address or registered to vote in their new homes. But it probably accounts for most voters who moved, and it shows how population shifts can have political consequences.

Consider Florida: Once a critical swing state, it has become more reliably Republican. Out of the 3.5 million voters we tracked, more than 200,000 registered Republicans have moved in over the past four years, more than twice the number of Democrats.

Mr. Biden won Georgia in 2020, the first time a Democrat won the state since 1992. Among more than 140,000 newcomers, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 9,000. Over the same span, at least 10,000 more Republicans than Democrats moved out of the state — a third of them to Florida.

In Arizona, a state Mr. Biden won by less than 12,000 votes, incoming Republicans — a third of them from California — outnumbered incoming Democrats by a margin of three to two. Accounting for departures, Arizona gained about 17,000 Republican voters.

In all three Northern battlegrounds — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — Democrats made small gains through migration. In Pennsylvania, this year’s key battleground, Democratic gains actually came amid population loss: For both parties, more voters moved out than in. But Republicans lost more.

California has contributed to this trend in a different way: by exporting Republicans en masse. More Republicans have moved out of California than any other state. And those who did have made other states redder in the process — particularly Texas, Arizona, Florida and Nevada.

What drives moving

Tens of millions of Americans move each year, whether across town or across the country. Most of the voters in our set moved during the pandemic, when home sales surged and many Americans were ready for a change.

Mr. Troyer, the Republican from Sioux Falls, moved closer to his wife’s family in Minnesota. Mr. Fisher, the Democrat, moved to escape the harsh South Dakota winters.

And yet both ended up in places that were more partisan than where they came from, a phenomenon known as “sorting.” Research on partisanship and migration has found politics typically figures into the equation only indirectly — or even coincidentally.

Previous research has found that most people don’t intentionally seek out politically homogenous areas, but instead share similar preferences with people who vote as they do, with Democrats favoring cities and Republicans favoring the country, on average. A 2015 study, however, found that people favor properties in neighborhoods that reflect their partisan identity.

“Am I going to fit? Fittingness is a very important criteria for a place to live,” said James Gimpel, a politics professor at the University of Maryland, and co-author of the study. “Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Gee, I’m looking forward to having a fight with my neighbors.’”

Our analysis and interviews suggest just how intertwined political and lifestyle choices can be when it comes to choosing a new home, particularly since 2020.

Mr. Fisher, the Democrat, said that while he was eager to escape the snow, he also found the local politics increasingly oppressive. An outspoken liberal, with bumper stickers on his Jeep to match, he was eager to find a place that better reflected his sensibilities.

“For the most part, you just kind of kept to yourself,” Mr. Fisher, a South Dakota native, said of his old neighborhood, a precinct Mr. Biden won by five points. He says he feels more comfortable in his home in southwest Charlotte, in a precinct Mr. Biden carried by 46 points. “It’s definitely bluer than where we were before, and kind of a nice change,” he said.

And Mr. Troyer now lives in Otsego, northwest of Minneapolis, which Mr. Trump won by 27 points. Mr. Troyer said he chose his neighborhood because it was close to his job and family. While he did not intentionally seek out a conservative community, he feels at ease at home and at work. “Everybody I associate with is Republican,” he said. “Everybody at work, the hardworking kind, we’re all Republican.”

Somewhere to belong

For a handful of the people interviewed for this article, politics was the impetus.

Erin Thompson, 39, felt out of step as the lone Republican voice among her Seattle friends. Even dating was hard. “You want to find someone who has the same fundamental belief system as you,” she said. Absent that, “It’s just a little isolating.” In 2021, in search of warmer weather and a community more closely matching her worldview, she moved to Gilbert, a conservative Phoenix suburb.

Romance was also a factor for Andrew Clohessey, 35, who moved to Minneapolis in 2021 from Cedar Falls, Iowa. He’d spent the previous year deliberately applying for jobs in liberal cities, eager to get out of an area that felt increasingly conservative to him, even though his precinct voted for Mr. Biden. He moved into a neighborhood with a lot of shops within walking distance, one that Mr. Biden carried by 61 points. “It’s been great,” he said. On dating apps he is now “more likely to match with people who have left-leaning political views.”

In contrast, Naomi Hattaway, 48, said politics “did not register one bit” when she moved for work to Fairburn, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, from Omaha (after a stop in Florida). An independent who previously registered as a Democrat, she said diversity mattered more to her than party affiliation. She feels more at home as a Black mixed race woman in a city with a large Black population and a diverse local government. “It’s everything,” she said, adding that she is “better off living somewhere I belonged.”

All movers we spoke to felt politically comfortable in their new homes. Upon retiring, Robert LaRoche, 60, moved from Las Vegas to Spring Hill, Fla., about an hour north of Tampa to live closer to family. While the majority of his old neighbors in a precinct that voted for Mr. Biden by 41 points “did not align with our values,” he said, that’s not why he moved, nor was it why he chose his new home. He sees it as a bonus that he gets to live in a precinct that voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 by 26 points.

Mr. LaRoche’s sentiment is shared by more and more Americans — that life is less contentious when the people around you vote the way you do.

“Now I can talk to my neighbors about absolutely anything and not start a big argument,” he said.

A Sonoma County Superior Court judge was issued a public admonishment Wednesday after he engaged in improper political activity and social media conduct connected to a proposed high school name change, a judicial conduct commission said.

A lawyer for the judge said the judge was simply exercising his 1st Amendment rights on a matter of public interest, not politics.

After a local school board approved a controversial consolidation of Analy High School in Sebastopol and its longtime rival, El Molino High School in Forestville, in 2021, local tempers flared, including for Judge James G. Bertoli, a 1978 Analy alumnus, the Commission on Judicial Performance said.

The Analy Alumni Assn., of which Bertoli served on the board of directors, opposed the change and led rallies, fundraising and recall campaigns for school board members.

Bertoli even played with his band, Court ‘n’ Disaster, at a fundraiser event opposing the consolidation — a band that he promoted with his judicial title and was separately admonished for in 2021. An admonishment is the least severe disciplinary action the Commission on Judicial Performance can issue.

The judge also met with a lawyer to discuss possible legal remedies to block the school’s name change, the commission said, creating a legal case that could have ended up in the Sonoma superior court system.

“The protest rallies involved a highly divisive issue, in which Judge Bertoli’s participation could reasonably undermine the public’s confidence in the judiciary,” the commission wrote.

At a rally opposing the name change in 2021, Bertoli was quoted saying the school board had no “flipping idea what it’s going to cost” to rebrand the existing Analy campus, the Press Democrat reported. The article and the judge’s quote were referenced by the judicial panel in the admonishment as improper. Although he never publicly called for school board members to be recalled, his hand in organizing the rallies was problematic, the commission ruled.

“As a rally organizer and speaker, Judge Bertoli’s participation in the group gave the appearance that he endorsed the group’s stated goals and activities, including the recall of all five school board members,” the commission said.

The commission rejected the defense that Bertoli wasn’t participating in political activity, stating that opinions on governmental affairs, like decisions of elected officials on a school board, could be considered political. After the name change was tossed out, the commission noted, Bertoli publicly described the victory as a democratic function of government: “Those in the minority of the result, as members of a democracy, need to learn to accept the results as the vote dictates. It is how we, the people, operate,” he wrote.

Bertoli’s speech was also not protected by the 1st Amendment, the commission said, because the Judicial Code of Conduct requires judges to accept additional restrictions on their speech that might be cumbersome to others in the pursuit of fairness.

James A. Murphy, Bertoli’s lawyer, told The Times he believes the commission overlooked Bertoli’s long-term ties to the school — his parents were both educators, and he worked at the school as a volunteer coach and announcer for football and baseball games, Murphy said. The judge’s concern was not just for the name change, Murphy said, but for the children who would have to deal with overcrowding due to the consolidation.

“The relationship between Analy [High School] and the Bertolis remains significant,” he said.

The name change and consolidation, which Bertoli opposed, Murphy argued, was an issue of public interest, not political. Murphy said the ruling was akin to punishing Bertoli for political opinions and actions committed by his next-door neighbor.

Murphy suggested the ruling, which is public, could have a significant chilling effect on other judges looking to express their 1st Amendment rights, making it unclear what constitutes a political issue versus what is a matter of public interest, independent of politics.

The commission also denounced several of Bertoli’s public Facebook posts, some of which included Peanuts and Hagar the Horrible comic strips. “Judge Bertoli made derogatory remarks about public officials, engaged in rhetoric that inflamed the passions of the community, and made profane remarks,” the commission wrote. Commenters frequently referred to him as “judge” and one thanked him for his “legal brain,” leading the commission to believe he lent the prestige of his office as a judge to his cause, which is also against the ethical code.

In one post, Bertoli shared a Hagar the Horrible comic in which Hagar comes home from battle injured, and his wife comes home equally battered — but from a school board meeting. “The West Sonoma County Union High School District board members and Superintendent Toni Beal coming home late last night,” Bertoli wrote in the caption. In another post, he characterized a school board member’s statement as “myopic, unanalytical and self-aggrandizing.”

In yet another instance, he posted a photo of himself announcing an Analy High School football game, and in response to a comment wrote, “I told them where they could put their microphone until they restore the Analy name.” He used other instances of profanity and derogatory language, the commission wrote, and spoke derisively of those who disagreed with him.

Bertoli is set to retire from the bench on Jan. 5.

Former President Trump rolled up to the battleground state of Wisconsin in a garbage truck on Wednesday, an apparent reference to President Biden’s remarks about supporters of the Republican nominee, which has caused a firestorm for Vice President Kamala Harris in the final days of a hotly contested election. 

Trump was pictured in Green Bay inside a white garbage truck wearing an orange reflective vest with “Trump Make America Great Again 2024” emblazoned on the vehicle. 

“How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump asked reporters. “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

TOP PUERTO RICAN OFFICIAL ENDORSES FORMER PRESIDENT AFTER COMIC’S RALLY SET RUFFLES FEATHERS

The stunt is an apparent dig at Biden, who has come under fire for calling Trump supporters garbage. 

During a virtual Harris campaign call with Voto Latino, Biden took a swipe at former Trump’s weekend rally in Madison Square Garden, which made headlines after insult comedian Tony Hinchiffe made jokes mocking different ethnic groups, with one joke referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it is un-American.”

The comment quickly went viral and sparked swift condemnation from critics. 

BIDEN CALLS TRUMP SUPPORTERS ‘GARBAGE’ DURING HARRIS CAMPAIGN EVENT AS VP PROMISES UNITY AT ELLIPSE RALLY

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump climbs into a garbage truck Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, as he arrives in Green Bay, Wis.  (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson))

Biden’s remarks were quickly compared to Hillary Clinton, who declared that Trump supporters were “deplorables” during the 2016 presidential race. 

Trump himself reacted to the “terrible” comment from Biden while speaking at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania. 

SLOTKIN SLAMS FELLOW DEM BIDEN FOR ‘GARBAGE’ GAFFE AMID HEATED SENATE BATTLE

“Remember Hillary? She said ‘deplorable’ and then said ‘irredeemable,’ right? But she said ‘deplorable.’ That didn’t work out. ‘Garbage’ I think is worse,” Trump said to his supporters at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Tuesday night. “But he doesn’t know- you have to please forgive him. Please forgive him. For he not knoweth what he said.”  

“And I’m convinced he likes me more than he likes Kamala,” Trump quipped.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden doesn’t view Trump supporters as “garbage.”

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he sits in a garbage truck Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Green Bay, Wis.  (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

“He has said multiple times that he is a president for all. It doesn’t matter if in a red state. It doesn’t matter if you live in a blue state,” she said. 

Vivek Ramaswamy was also seen riding on the back of a garbage truck in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday. Ramaswamy, who threw his support to Trump after dropping out of the presidential race, wore a yellow reflective vest while greeting supporters.