The Urban-Rural Political Trust Gap: Rurality, Trust, and Partisan Support

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Abstract

This paper explores the role that political trust plays in the growing urban-rural partisan divide in American politics. As this division has grown increasingly significant in American elections, recent scholarship has sought to understand the factors driving the mounting conservatism of rural communities. While much recent emphasis has been centered on placed-based resentment, a theorized but empirically overlooked factor contributing to this divide is geographic variation in trust in government. Building on past research on rural consciousness and political trust, this paper tests the hypotheses that Americans living in rural areas are less trusting of government than those in suburban and urban areas, and that increased trust in government leads to greater increases in support for Democrats than for Republicans. After conducting quantitative empirical analysis using American National Election Studies data, this research finds results to support both hypotheses- that increased rurality is negatively correlated with political trust and that increased trust in government corresponds with a stronger increase in support for Democrats. These findings solidify the importance of political trust in understanding the urban-rural divide by confirming a geographic gap in trust in government and that greater trust in government has a partisan benefit. Taken together, these findings support the theory that lower levels of political trust in rural areas disadvantage Democrats and contribute to the growing urban-rural partisan divide in American politics.

Author

• James Kirk, University of Notre Dame