Rural identity and LGBTQ public opinion in the United States

Abstract

Opposition to LGBTQ rights remains a contemporary fixture within the United Statesin spite of increasingly liberalizing attitudes towards LGBTQ individuals. In this paper, I argue that an overlooked factor driving this opposition is rural identity – or the extent of an individual’s psychological attachment to a rural area. Recent work posits that the term “urban” may function as a blanket term for outgroups who tend to cluster within urban areas of the US. I extend this argument by positing that a prominent “urban affiliated” outgroup are LGBTQ individuals. Using data from the 2020 ANES, I find that rural identity predicts less favorable estimations of LGBTQ individuals. Individuals who identify as rural are also less likely to support pro-LGBTQ policy measures than individuals who do not identify as rural. Crucially, rural identity is a stronger predictor of group-based affect and attitudes towards LGBTQ policy measures than actual rural residency. This lends weight to the argument that simply living in a rural area does not capture the affective dimension of place-based attachments. These findings have implications for when it means to hold a rural identity beyond a generalized animosity towards urban areas, and for understanding urban-rural divergences in US public opinion on issues such as LGBTQ rights.

The war on flags: The opposition to state-sponsored LGBTQ+ symbols

“…Additionally, residing in a small town (with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants) also appears as a sporadic predictor. This finding resonates with recent studies indicating that individuals identifying with rural areas are less likely to support pro-LGBTQ+ policy measures compared to their non-rural counterparts (Thompson 2023). Interestingly, in the full models that include partisan variables, gender does not emerge as significant predictor.…”

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

“…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).…”

Rural identity and gun policy preferences in the United States

“…Rural group identifiers tend to see fellow group members positively, and they perceive themselves as having distinct values relative to others (Lyons & Utych 2021, Lunz Trujillo 2022a, Parker et al 2018. Rural identity has also been shown to predict various politically relevant attitudes, including Trump support, populist attitudes, affective polarization, LGBTQ attitudes, and more due to underlying group norms as well as resentment against urban-affiliated groups (Lin & Lunz Trujillo 2022, Lunz Trujillo 2022a,b, Lyons & Utych 2021, Nelsen & Petsko 2021, Thompson 2023). In addition, rural identification captures people who feel they are rural, in terms of group norms and values, but do not actually live in a rural area (Lunz Trujillo 2022a).…”

“…Prior studies have used objective measures of place to test urban-rural differences in Americans' political preferences (Gimpel et al 2020, Scala & Johnson 2017. However, recent work suggests that subjective measures of urbanicity may be especially relevant for understanding geographic polarization in political attitudes (Lunz Trujillo 2022b, Lyons & Utych 2021, Nemerever & Rogers 2021, Thompson 2023. This paper builds on this argument by highlighting how rural identity is associated with Americans' gun policy preferences, and how this relationship depends on an individual's subjective identification with place.…”