Municipal Identity and City Interests

Borwein, Sophie; Lucas, Jack

doi:10.1007/s11109-021-09735-5

Cited by 15 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, this study implies that across several major national issues, urban-rural division is essentially reflective of partisan division. However, there may be other issues not examined here that lend themselves to a more specific urban-rural split, echoing scholarship emphasizing the importance of place in politics (Borwein and Lucas, 2021;Munis, 2020). Future work should further examine the complexity that certain elements of urban-rural division are the result of the partisan nationalization of politics, while others reflect the relevance of local and place-based considerations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 84%

Are Rural Attitudes Just Republican?

Lin¹,

Trujillo²

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 84%

Are Rural Attitudes Just Republican?

Lin¹,

Trujillo²

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Relatedly, place-based identity has been found to be more predictive of political outcomes compared to residency alone (Borwein and Lucas, 2021;Lunz Trujillo, 2022b;Thompson, 2023). Some of this difference likely stems from the behavioral and attitudinal tendencies of social identification: strongly held group identities foster increased support for in-group norms and relevant group-based attitudes (Huddy, 2003).…”

Section: Partisan Affect and Urban-rural Divisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban-Rural Residency, Place Identity, and Affective Polarization in the United States

Lin¹,

Trujillo²

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The US has seen an increase in affective polarization and negative partisanship over the past few decades. Among other factors, previous work suggests that politically homogeneous social contexts foster increased out-group partisan animosity. Given the concurrent widening urban-rural divide in political affiliation, we hypothesize that rural Republicans and urban Democrats will be more affectively polarized than their respective co-partisans. Using 2020 ANES data (N = 8280), we examine partisan in-group and out-group affect among Republicans and Democrats along the urban-rural spectrum, and by urban-rural place identity. In doing so, we find our expectation to be mostly true with some important caveats. First, rural (and rural-identifying) Republicans are cooler towards Democrats, while city and city-identifying Republicans feel warmer towards the opposing party. However, among Democrats, residential identity inconsistently predicts out-group partisan affect, while urban-rural residency does consistently predict negative out-group partisan affect. Urban-rural residency and place identity do not significantly predict partisan in-group affect among Republicans or Democrats, controlling for other factors. In other words, we find that partisan out-group affect varies by residency and place identity, in line with our expectations. We discuss these results in terms of partisan asymmetry, as well as their implications for mitigating negative partisanship.

show abstract

“…Previous research suggests that voters are likely to value local cues because they send two primary signals: (1) shared identity between candidate and voter; (2) representational quality. First, symbolic geographic units, including cities and states, can serve as the basis of one’s social identity (e.g., Tajfel, 1974; Panagopoulos and Bailey, 2020; Jacobs & Munis, 2020; Borwein & Lucas, 2021). Appealing to voters’ social identities is effective because it signals to voters that the candidate cares about their ingroup.…”

Section: Why Local Sells: the Power Of Place And Representational Fol...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Munis

Burke

2023

American Politics Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Contemporary public opinion in the United States has been characterized by affective polarization and the nationalization of political behavior. In this paper, we examine whether local framing can decrease voters’ reliance on national partisan identities when evaluating their representatives in the United States Congress. Relying on both an experimental study and observational data from senators’ Facebook posts, we find evidence that “talking local” is an effective means for representatives to bypass the “perceptual screen” of partisanship . Candidates who “go local” in their communication style are able to expand their electoral coalition by appealing to independents and outpartisans alike. Observational findings suggest that many politicians, especially those representing competitive districts, are aware of this and “go local” strategically.

show abstract

Municipal Identity and City Interests

Cited by 15 publications

References 41 publications

Are Rural Attitudes Just Republican?

Are Rural Attitudes Just Republican?

Urban-Rural Residency, Place Identity, and Affective Polarization in the United States

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

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About