The Liberal Suburb Paradox: How 'Great Schools' Around Boston Encode Class and Geography

Affluent Boston suburbs vote Democratic by 30 to 50-point margins while preserving some of the country's most exclusionary housing systems. The mechanism isn't bigotry. It's price, lot size, and the quiet sorting power of 'great schools.'

Buyers shopping inside Route 128, parents weighing school rankings, anyone curious why blue states stay segregated.

• •Ten anchor towns voted 70 to 82 percent for Harris and require $280K+ incomes to enter
• •Lexington is 57.8% white, 31.6% Asian, 1.7% Black, 3.2% Hispanic (ACS 2023)
• •Dover is 73.6% white, 0% Black per ACS 2023; Belmont and Hingham each under 2% Black
• •MBTA Communities Act compliance fights exposed how local politics diverge from national
• •'Great schools' rankings correlate more tightly with household income than instruction quality
• •The exclusion is structural and largely race-neutral on paper. The outcomes are not.