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Are rural attitudes just Republican?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2023

Jennifer Lin Open the ORCID record for Jennifer Lin [Opens in a new window]  and
Kristin Lunz Trujillo Open the ORCID record for Kristin Lunz Trujillo [Opens in a new window]
Jennifer Lin
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Kristin Lunz Trujillo*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
*
Corresponding author: Kristin Lunz Trujillo; Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Rural residents are typically construed as being more conservative than urban residents. Is this true, or do rural residents carry unique interests from Republicans or conservatives? Using the 2020 ANES, we compare responses from 22 national issues by interacting urban and rural residency with Republican and Democrat identification. We find that issue preferences are partisan, not place-based: rural Democrats resemble their urban counterparts and urban Republicans resemble their rural counterparts, rather than rural areas specifically being more Republican. However, rural Democrats are more conservative than urban Democrats on issues relating to immigration, transgendered people in the military, and income inequality. These results point to partisan nationalization in issue stances, with exceptions, and that rural is not always Republican.

Keywords

ideologypartisanshippolitical attitudespolitical geographyurban–rural
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 2024 , pp. 675 - 684
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of EPS Academic Ltd

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