Are Rural Attitudes Just Republican?

Abstract

Are issue attitudes of rural residents aligned with those of Republicans in theUnited States? Previous research demonstrates an urban-rural divide in issue attitudes whereby rural residents tend to adopt more conservative policy positions and urban residents tend to adopt more liberal ones in the US. In this paper, we investigate whether this notion holds true, or if rural residents are indeed their own unique constituency that carries interests different from what is traditionally “Republican”. We examine canonical issues that are widely discussed in the political discourse and leverage data from the 2020 ANES to compare responses between rural and urban residents, Democrats and Republicans, and the interaction between these factors. In doing so, we find that urban-rural issue differences reflect partisan issue differences - e.g., rural Democrats resemble their urban counterparts and urban Republicans resemble their rural counterparts - rather than rural areas specifically being more Republican. However, we identify certain issues relating to immigration where rural Democrats are more conservative than urban Democrats. These results support the idea that rural America is not always reflective of conservatism and Republicanism. In addition, it points to the role of partisan nationalization in issue stances across the urban-rural spectrum; future scholarship should aim to further illuminate the complexity of this nationalization versus the relevance of place and local considerations in other facets of American politics.