Depopulation and the Polling Booth – Political Participation in Urban/Rural America

• In Event: Student Forum Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 16: Urban and Community Sociology

Abstract

How do communities affected by population loss engage with politics? A robust literature has focused upon polarization between urban and rural America, centering economic anxieties and cultural divisions as explanatory variables for the spread of right-wing perspectives among rural populations. This project asks a more foundational question: how do relationships to politics at large change when populations sizes decline? Specifically, how is depopulation associated with varying levels of political participation, and how does this association differ between the urban and the rural? Using Census data and county-level voter records, and implementing spatial models, I survey trends in population loss and voting participation rates at the county level across the US between 1970-2020. The preliminary results suggest that somewhat surprisingly, depopulation may be associated with increased voter turnout in rural America.

Author

• Meghann Norden-Bright, University of Wisconsin-Madison