But differences in party affiliation are small when compared to the psychic divide between the cities.
Beyond the debate over money, the fight reflects differences in party ideology and over which districts get more money.
Despite differences in party affiliation, Latino Democratic and Republican aides in Washington are a tight-knit group, given that just a handful hold prominent positions.
Our other assumption is that a new president deserves in normal circumstances to have his appointments approved and that standard differences in party philosophy are not adequate reason for blocking an appointment.
I recall my own difficult confirmation 35 years ago as the first female judge on the circuit; eminent senators such as Barry Goldwater, Thad Cochran and Alan Simpson voted to confirm me regardless of differences in party or general political philosophy.
Nolan McCarty, a political scientist at Princeton who wrote the book "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches" with Rosenthal and Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, said that their research has shown that: "there are big regional differences in party support related to social issues, culture, etc., but within regions, voting is very much determined by income.
It would be convenient to argue that this was a battle of methodologies, with telephone versus internet polls explaining the differences in party support, but it doesn't quite work like that: the most recent ComRes telephone poll has Conservative and Labour on 33% each and a YouGov internet poll has Conservatives 33% and Labour 34%.
Inheritance accounted for 14percentt of the difference in party, the researchers found.
The phenomenon of a wide difference in party preferences and political attitudes by gender stemmed from the rise of the Baby Boomer Generation in the late 1960s.
Despite their difference in party, Jimmy Carter followed similar policies to Harding in returning the country to normalcy after the unpopular Vietnam War and Watergate scandal.
