Event Summary: The Rural Voter with Dr. Nicholas Jacobs
The Rural Reconciliation Project hosted Dr. Nicholas Jacobs—professor, researcher, and resident of rural Maine—to discuss his new book on the political attitudes of rural communities for the first event in the Project’s new Rural Identity program series.
The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America, co-authored with Dr. Daniel Shea, is the end result of the largest-ever survey targeted at understanding rural political beliefs and examines the historical and modern factors that have influenced the ‘rural voter.’
Motivating the project was the question of whether the rural-urban divide, so central in today’s American political discourse, is in fact an accurate representation of a true geographical divide or is instead the result of the differing demographic composition of rural and urban areas. The book took two approaches to answering this question: first, a historical analysis of the rural-urban divide; second, a nationwide surveying of rural residents targeted at understanding not just what residents of rural communities believe, but why they hold such beliefs.
Event Recording
Discussion Highlights
Drs. Jacobs and Shea document an unprecedented shift and growth of rural Republican voters in recent years. However, their research also discovered that this shift predates any single political actor—and predates Donald J. Trump’s leadership in particular. Instead, Drs. Jacobs and Shea emphasize these changes are rooted in wider influences on rural communities.
For example, Dr. Jacobs discussed rural communities’ tendency to be less individualistically motivated and instead more responsive to communal anxieties. As a result, economic hardships felt by community members are more likely to influence the community as a whole. Similarly, rural residents tend to have higher civic and political participation. Both the size and interconnectedness of rural communities tends to lead to higher levels of community engagement.
However, Dr. Jacobs highlighted the ways in which rural residents are more similar to their urban counterparts than many perceive. For example, there was no difference between rural and urban residents regarding beliefs on abortion, militarism, or evangelism. Additionally, while racial resentment was higher due to rural beliefs in meritocracy, racism did not predict rurality—those beliefs are found across different types of communities. Rather, the largest differences exist in media portrayal of rural people and values. Such media portrayal works to both isolate rural residents and reinforce urban residents’ stereotypical view of what is rural.
Finally, although rural communities vary greatly across the country, Dr. Jacobs noted that rural residents as a whole tend to share a sense of a distinct rural culture, specifically a strong sense of place. Rural residents are more likely to have a unique attachment to and pride in their communities.
During his lecture, Dr. Jacobs discussed how many of the trends identified in his research have played out in the recent election cycle. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the rural gap will only continue to widen. Rather, Dr. Jacobs outlined ways in which politicians can and have already started to understand and address the feelings and concerns of the rural communities. The Rural Voter presents a detailed analysis of what makes a rural voter and how political actors can better understand the attitudes, values, and needs of rural communities.
In-Person Watch Party at the University of Nebraska College of Law
This Rural Reconciliation Project event was part of the Rural Identity series and was presented in conjunction with the College of Law’s Law and Democracy Series with generous support from Ron and the late Barb Schaefer. More information about the event is available here and to join us for future events, please subscribe for program reminders here.
