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Even government agencies have turned to clusters for social marketing projects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention use the clusters to ensure that their health and safety messages are understood in the communities needing assistance. When the CDC was called on to provide workers at an Alabama beryllium plant with safety information, a cluster analysis of the neighborhoods surrounding the factory gave CDC field-workers "cultural sensitivity training beyond the stereotypes to help them better reach their audience," says Susan Kirby, a CDC marketing communications scientist. In Kansas, adoption officials at the state's Social Rehabilitation Services Office had difficulty finding couples who would adopt special-needs children. Accordingly, they cluster-coded couples who'd adopted children with physical or learning disabilities in an attempt to find their "clones." Their work yielded some surprises: Among the most receptive couples were those in New Homesteaders, a midscale town cluster, and Southside City, a downscale African American neighborhood type. With several different target groups, Kansas officials developed a statewide direct-mail campaign with multiple messages, featuring a photo of a white or black youngster, depending on the cluster, with the same caption: "A kid like this deserves a home like yours." The response outstripped that of any previous campaign, notes Bob Nunley, director of the Kansas Geographic Bureau. "It also tickled the hell out of me because many of my white liberal friends didn't believe that black couples adopt black kids. And the clusters proved that they did."

The beauty of the cluster system is that it can reveal consumer niches in the unlikeliest of places. Executive Suites, the third-wealthiest lifestyle type, has lots of Beef Jerky fans; the blue-collar households of Rural Industria are a good market for pagers; and Golden Ponds seniors have a devilish desire to visit theme parks. Young Literati, a cluster of urban singles with a high concentration of writers and artists, displays an unusual fondness for Cheerios. When Time Inc. Ventures launched its urban culture magazine VIBE, its advertisers believed that the target audience was inner-city kids. But receptive readers were also found among white-collar suburbanites living in Young Influentials and Money & Brains communities - those who parrot the in-your-face street styles of the inner city. Accordingly, the magazine began selling advertising space for consumer electronics that would appeal to upscale suburban tastes.

Although market researchers have known about it for years, politicians are only now beginning to use cluster technology to satisfy the myriad voting factions. Party-line affiliations have so disintegrated - the nation's two parties can't even muster a simple majority when electing a president - that strategists are turning to cluster affiliations to understand how allegiances shift depending on the issue at hand. During the 1996 presidential campaign, the Clinton reelection team used the clusters to identify the nation's swing voters and craft ads and speeches to help President Clinton address their concerns. Pollster Mark Penn directed a survey of ten thousand voters to probe their attitudes and lifestyles. The results yielded a profile of uncommitted voters who came from clusters like Big Sky Families and Family Scramble. As a group, they tended to be young, socially conservative voters who cared deeply about family and fiscal concerns. Acknowledging that portrait, Clinton ads began blasting Bob Dole and the Republican proposal to cut Medicare, and Clinton speeches began casting the president as the staunch defender of issues like family leave, education, and the environment. In the aftermath, election observers cited the family-friendly strategy as being key to Clinton's eventual victory with 49 percent of the vote.

The bare plurality Clinton needed to be elected president reflects an important truth: Cluster lifestyles have become a force more potent than race, geography, gender, or ideology in shaping voter attitudes. Politicians must now tap into sophisticated survey techniques that use lifestyle and demographic data to reach ever smaller divisions of the electorate. Americans are too complex to be counted on to behave as traditional voting blocs of union members, Catholics, or senior citizens; seniors, for example, don't all feel the same way. The suburban retirees who live in Pools & Patios are lapsed Republicans, wary of the party's stand on abortion and other social issues. In Mines & Mills, many aging voters still support unions and describe political issues in terms of class conflicts between management and labor; they still see government as their protector. When third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot ran for office in 1996, his supporters represented a variety of backgrounds up and down the cluster ladder: the yuppies of Young Influentials, the immigrant families of American Dreams, and the blue-collar workers of Rural Industria. All found themselves disconnected from the traditional two-party system that so often casts candidates and concerns in stark pros and cons. "On most issues, the clusters reveal a checkerboard effect," says William Krause, a survey statistician with Wirthlin Worldwide in McLean, Virginia. "All across America, the views of voters shift according to the issue and their perspective on the world."

Ultimately, the clusters reveal the many cultural divides that separate Americans on political and social issues. Tensions exist between the clusters of whites and minority groups on issues like affirmative action, immigration, crime, and culture. And increasingly, ideological gaps are widening as homogenizing institutions like the military draft disappear and individuals retreat to the comfort of their special interests. The 1998 debate in San Francisco over requiring school students to read literary works written by nonwhite authors can be explained in cluster terms. The top five clusters in San Francisco (Young Literati, Bohemian Mix, Urban Achievers, American Dreams, and Money & Brains) all have large numbers of Asians and foreign-born residents. They face a daily challenge of trying to balance cultural pride with the desire to be American that in the past meant celebrating a Eurocentric literary canon. The school system's compromise solution, requiring students to read at least one nonwhite author a year, is a harbinger of controversies to come in a nation of increasing diversity.

But at least such school debates are taking place. In Sun City West, Arizona, an exclusive Gray Power community west of Phoenix, elderly residents voted down tax referenda that would have funded a school district that includes a high proportion of young families classified as Boomers & Babies. At Dysart High School, the result was that the marching band had to fold, the number of librarians and school nurses was halved, and the football and basketball teams nearly disbanded because of budget constraints. Battles like this are becoming commonplace in the splintered society. Politicians call these "wedge issues," but they no longer divide the population into two adversarial camps. Instead, they now scatter a range of views into smaller factions. Today, there's little agreement on what truths Americans hold to be self-evident.

Copyright © 2000 by Michael J. Weiss

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About the Author

Michael J. Weiss is an award-winning journalist, author, and marketing consultant. A contributing editor to the Washingtonian and Ladies' Home Journal, he has also written for the Atlantic Monthly, the Newport Times, Redbook, and People. His first book, The Clustering of America, was named one of the best business books of 1988. He lives with his wife and two children in Washington, D.C.