Place-Based Resentment in Contemporary U.S. Elections: The Individual Sources of America’s Urban-Rural Divide

Abstract

Drawing on a unique battery of questions fielded on the 2018 CCES and in two separate surveys—one in 2019 and the other during the 2020 election—we study the extent to which Americans feel animus toward communities that are geographically distinct from their own and whether these feelings explain Americans’ attitudes toward the two major political parties and self-reported vote choice. We report results on how place-based resentment predicted vote choice in the 2018 midterm and 2020 general elections and how those feelings relate to other widely studied facets of political behavior such as partisanship and racial resentment. Rural resentment is a powerful predictor of vote choice in both election years examined.

Talk Local to Me: Assessing the Heterogenous Effects of Localistic Appeals

“…Senators, which means that the relevant symbolic geography (i.e., place) are American states. As others have demonstrated, state-based identity is a form of place identity meaningful to voters and one that can, under the right conditions, become temporarily relevant to politics (Jacobs & Munis, 2020;Jacobs & Munis, 2022;Munis, 2021. 8.…”

Don't fence me in! Rural resentment and political trust in the United States

“…By contrast, rural resentment captures the affective dimension of place (Lyons & Utych 2021). This is important because the affective dimension of place is more strongly related to political behavior than measures of residence (Jacobs & Munis 2022). For these reasons, I propose a further hypothesis regarding the explanatory power of rural resentment: H2: Rural resentment is negatively associated with political trust above and beyond measures of rural identity and residence.…”

“…An essential component of rural resentment is therefore the affective response to these perceived outgroups and, in particular, feelings of anger and resentment. More recent work builds on the work of Cramer (2016), finding that these perceptions are consequential for a variety of political attitudes and behaviors (Huijsmans 2022, Jacobs & Munis 2022 Crowley 2022, Lyons & Utych 2021).…”

“…Rural resentment is associated with a plethora of political attitudes and behaviors, including anti-immigrant attitudes (Huijsmans 2022), political ideology (Trujillo & Crowley 2022), as well as candidate evaluations and vote choice (Jacobs & Munis 2022). However, there is a paucity of work on whether these attitudes shape political trust.…”

“…Extant work finds rural resentment to be a politically relevant construct with greater explanatory power than measures of rural identity and rural residence when it comes to understanding various political attitudes and behaviors (Jacobs & Munis 2022, Trujillo & Crowley 2022. Rural resentment is likely a stronger concomitant of political attitudes and behaviors because it a measure of group consciousness.…”