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Asymmetries in Urban, Suburban, and Rural

Place-Based Resentment
Sophie Borwein
Simon Fraser University
seb4@sfu.ca

Jack Lucas
University of Calgary
jack.lucas@ucalgary.ca

2022-08-15

Abstract

This paper investigates the size, socio-demographic correlates, and political im-
plications of place-based resentment in urban, suburban, and rural areas, with a
particular focus on similarities and differences in high-resentment individuals across
place types. We focus on three research questions. First, we ask how place resent-
ment varies across all possible combinations of urban, suburban, and rural in-groups
and out-groups. Second, we explore if high-resentment individuals in urban, subur-
ban, and rural areas share similar socio-demographic and political characteristics.
Finally, we investigate how citizens’ satisfaction with their elected representatives,
and positions on contentious and important policy issues, are related to place-
based resentment. We investigate these questions using two large-scale surveys of
the Canadian public. We find that place-based resentment is highly asymmetric:
resentment is strongest among rural residents regardless of the target (suburban or
urban) of their resentment, whereas urban and suburban residents tend to resent
each other more than either group resents rural areas. We also find substantial
asymmetries in the correlates and political implications of place resentment. Our
findings suggest that place resentment is an important and politically consequential
phenomenon across all place types, but also that the character and strength of this
resentment is quite different in rural, suburban, and urban places.

Keywords: place identity; place resentment; urban-rural divide

1
1 Introduction
Recent elections in Canada, the United States, and Europe have been characterized by
dramatic urban-rural electoral divides (Armstrong, Lucas, and Taylor 2022; Rodriguez-
Pose 2018; Rodden 2019). One important source of this divide, according to recent
research, is a strong sense of personal identification with place – or “place-based identity”
– among voters, especially among voters in rural or peripheral places (Cramer 2016; de
Lange, Brug, and Harteveld 2022; Hegewald and Schraff 2022; Trujillo and Crowley
2022; Wuthnow 2019). As pioneering ethnographic research by Katherine Cramer (2016)
in Wisconsin first observed, rural place identity appears to be underpinned not only by
citizens’ feelings of in-group attachment to their own communities, but also, even more
significantly, by out-group hostility toward places that they perceive to enjoy undeserved
benefits that are not available to their own communities.
Inspired by Cramer’s findings, a new research agenda has emerged that has doc-
umented the electoral consequences of out-group place resentment in rural and eco-
nomically peripheral regions (e.g. Fitzgerald 2018; McKay, Jennings, and Stoker 2021;
Rodriguez-Pose 2018; Wuthnow 2019). In the United States, researchers have sought
to articulate the distinct cultural, economic, and representational components of place
resentment – that is, the perception among rural dwellers that they are culturally disre-
spected, economically under-resourced, and politically under-represented – and they have
connected this resentment to support for populist candidates in the Republican Party,
including Scott Walker (in Wisconsin) and Donald Trump (Cramer 2016; Munis 2020;
Hochschild 2016; Trujillo and Crowley 2022; Wuthnow 2019). In Europe, researchers
have shown that peripherality—distance from the “country’s centre of cultural, economic
and political dominance”— engenders as much or more place resentment than rurality
(de Lange, Brug, and Harteveld 2022, 1), and is related to support for European parties
of the radical right (Harteveld et al. 2022).
These studies illustrate the political significance of place-based resentment. Yet they
tend to assume that place resentment is a phenomenon contained primarily in rural or
peripheral “left-behind” places. In our study, we join a newly emerging thread of research
(Munis 2020) in the view that voters in non-rural places may also harbour substantial
resentment toward place-based out-groups. While research leaves little doubt that rural
voters often feel resentful of urban places, recent politics in many countries suggests that
place-based resentment may flow in other directions as well – such as suburban-to-urban
or urban-to-rural. To give just one example, the electoral success of Toronto’s unusual
mayor, Rob Ford, has been attributed to voters in Toronto’s postwar suburbs who felt
“alienated from the downtown elites that dominate city politics” (McGregor, Moore, and
Stephenson 2021, 90). Issues like mass transit, highway construction, bicycle lanes, and
housing density perpetually inflame tensions between urban and suburban residents, with

2
both sides asserting that the other group’s interests are better represented by politicians
and governments.
This raises the following questions: how widespread is place-based resentment in pol-
itics, and toward what kinds of places is this resentment directed? To answer these
questions, our study builds on recent work that has applied Cramer’s concept of ru-
ral resentment beyond rural settings (de Lange, Brug, and Harteveld 2022; Trujillo and
Crowley 2022;1 Munis 2020), and in particular on work by Munis (2020) that develops a
quantitative measure of place resentment in American politics that he applies not only to
voters in rural communities, but to urban and suburban place types as well. While this
work has been a valuable corrective to studies that focus exclusively on rural or peripheral
place resentment, it still overlooks the forms of place resentment that may be harboured
by – and directed at – residents in different place types. Especially overlooked are the
suburbs: among the few existing studies that clearly distinguish suburban voters, Munis
(2020) allows for suburban residents to be resentful toward urban areas, but does not al-
low for the possibility that urban or rural residents may see suburban places as a relevant
place-based “out group”, while Lyons and Utych (2021) exclude suburban respondents
altogether in examining how place effects perceptions of differences among urban, subur-
ban, and rural areas (they also do not examine place resentment specifically).2 This is an
important shortcoming, because it overlooks forms of resentment that involve suburban
places as in-groups or out-groups and misses a substantial fraction of most countries’
populations: nearly 40% of Canadians in our study feel that the word “suburban” best
describes the place they live, and just under half of the American respondents in Lyons
and Utych (2021) describe their communities as suburban. Rural, suburban, and urban
regions are meaningful categories for voters and politically salient regions for interpreting
election outcomes (Johnson and Scala 2022; Walks 2004, 2005, 2007), and studies of place
resentment must try to capture each of these place types in their studies.
Our study corrects this shortcoming and extends recent research by exploring the
strength, variability, and political consequences of place-based resentment across all pos-
sible combinations of urban, suburban, and rural places as both “in groups” and “out
groups” for citizens. By asking survey respondents to report the place type that best and
least describes their residence, we are able to avoid collapsing place-based resentments
into a single urban-rural dichotomy and provide the first comprehensive analysis of sub-
urban place-based resentment as a distinct phenomenon. This approach allows us to
explore differences in the size of place resentment in each of the six possible combinations
1
While Trujillo and Crowley examine non-rural voters, they only examine rural conciousness (i.e. per-
ceptions related to rural places being disrespected or under-represented), and not resentment rooted in
other place types.
2
Lyons and Utych (2021) do examine if suburban (and rural and urban) voters are more likely to
allocate resources to hypothetical places that match their community type, but they do not examine if
allocation preferences depend specifically on out-group resentment or affect.

3
of place-based in groups and out groups (rural versus urban, rural versus suburban, sub-
urban versus rural, suburban versus urban, urban versus rural, urban versus suburban)
along with similarities and differences in the characteristics of individuals who harbour
strong place resentment in each place type.
Our second contribution to the literature on place resentment is to explore a wider
range of political implications than have previously been examined. To date, the primary
political outcome of interest for research on place resentment has been vote choice (de
Lange, Brug, and Harteveld 2022; Munis 2020; Harteveld et al. 2022; Trujillo and Crowley
2022), with only a small number of studies examining the relationship between place
resentment and other political attitudes, such as trust in government (McKay, Jennings,
and Stoker 2021) or anti-immigrant and racial attitudes (Huijsmans 2022; Nelsen and
Petsko 2021).3 We extend this work with an in-depth analysis of the relationship between
place resentment and democratic satisfaction – including citizens’ views on the quality of
representation they receive from their representatives and governments across multiple
levels – among urban, suburban, and rural residents. Finally, we also conduct a more
exploratory analysis of how place-based resentment relates to beliefs around a set of
“progressive” issues – including the environment, immigration, and moral traditionalism
– on which rural and urban residents often tend to disagree (Luca et al. 2021; Gimpel et
al. 2020).
Our analysis produces three main findings. First, in keeping with recent work in the
United States, we find that place-based resentment is strongest among rural residents,
regardless of the target (suburban or urban) of their resentment; this resentment, how-
ever, is not mirrored by urban and suburban residents, who tend to resent one another
more strongly than rural places. Second, we find that the correlates of place-based re-
sentment are highly variable across place types; while place identity is a strong predictor
of place-based resentment regardless of where one lives, other correlates (such as age,
education, and partisanship) are significant in some place types and not others. In other
words, individuals who feel strong place resentment are not a single general “type”; high-
resentment rural, suburban, and urban residents share some characteristics in common,
but are also very different from one another. Finally, we find substantial differences in the
implications of place-based resentment for citizens’ satisfaction with their governments
and representatives; in rural areas, high place resentment is associated with reduced sat-
isfaction, while the opposite is true in suburban and urban places. Similarly, high place
resentment is associated with more progressive policy attitudes among urbanites, while
the opposite is true among those who live in suburban and rural places.
3
In similar work, Hegewald and Schraff (2022) examine how place-based affect (urban and rural voters’
like and dislike of one another) shapes support for nationalist and cosmopolitan parties in Europe. As
the authors argue, place-based affect is related to, but distinct from, place-based resentment. Diamond
(2021) conducts a qualitative study of environmental attitudes where rural resentment emerges as a
theme, but her study is limited to rural participants.

4
2 Place Resentment in Comparative Context
A number of recent studies of advanced industrial countries have documented profound
urban-rural divides across a range of political attitudes and behaviours, including at-
titudes toward immigration and racial minorities, party identification, preferences for
moral traditionalism, and political party support (e.g. Armstrong, Lucas, and Taylor
2022; Czaika and Di Lillo 2018, 2018; Fitzgerald 2018; Gimpel et al. 2020; Rodriguez-
Pose 2018; Rodden 2019). While it is possible for groups to disagree with one another
without connecting their views to a deeper sense of who they are, the strength and per-
sistence of geographic divides in contemporary politics has led researchers to suspect that
they are likely rooted in important social attachments and identities (Mason 2018; Hege-
wald and Schraff 2022; Cramer 2016). A number of recent studies have shown that many
people do identify strongly with their local communities, and that these place identities
structure their political attitudes and preferences (e.g. Borwein and Lucas 2021; Cramer
2016; Fitzgerald 2018; Wong 2010; Jacobs and Munis 2019; Munis 2021).
To understand the character and effects of these place-based identities, many re-
searchers have turned to insights from social identity theory, perhaps the most widely
invoked theory of group belonging (Tajfel and Turner 1979; Tajfel 1981). Social identity
theory emphasizes that humans are psychologically motivated to form attachments to so-
cial groups and that these group identities are often central to their concepts of self and
self-esteem, helping to explain why deeply felt place identities can have important politi-
cal implications. Social identity theory also provides the additional insight that people’s
desire to create a positive self-esteem around their in-group identities can often encourage
negative comparison and hostility toward relevant out-groups (Tajfel and Turner 1979).
Given this latter insight, a body of research on the politics of place has now emerge
that focuses not so much on the political consequences of in-group identification, but
rather on the effects of antagonism with place-based out-groups (Cramer 2016; de Lange,
Brug, and Harteveld 2022; Harteveld et al. 2022; Trujillo and Crowley 2022; Munis 2020).
A particular motivation for this research has been to explain geographic patterns of sup-
port for populist parties and movements, including Donald Trump, Brexit, and European
radical right parties, which has led to a focus on rural and peripheral places whose resi-
dents report feeling economically, culturally, and politically marginalized (Cramer 2016;
de Lange, Brug, and Harteveld 2022; Harteveld et al. 2022; Trujillo and Crowley 2022;
Wuthnow 2019). Building on Cramer (2016)’s ethnographic study of place identity in ru-
ral Wisconsin, this research has elaborated how, in places that feel left behind, in-group
place attachments have developed into more than a simple preference for one’s in-group
over their out-group; instead, these attachments have encouraged a distinct type of “place
resentment” directed at places at the country’s economic and cultural centre, which are
perceived to be unfairly advantaged and prioritized.

5
Cramer (2016) further argues that place resentment comprises three distinct, although
related, concerns among people in rural communities, rooted in economic, cultural, and
representational considerations. The first, economic concerns, relates to rural residents’
perceptions that their communities are denied their “fair share” of economic resources by
people and governments in geographic centres of power. The second set of concerns relate
to culture, and ruralites’ perceptions that they possess distinct values and ways of life that
people in cities look down on and disrespect. Finally, representational concerns include
the belief that politicians and elites at the centre are unconcerned with the problems
facing rural areas, and that their communities are otherwise left-out of politics and policy-
making.
New research has continued to draw heavily on Cramer (2016)’s influential study of
rural resentment, developing her ideas in several directions. One extension has been to
develop quantitative survey-based measures of place resentment. Both Munis (2020) and
Trujillo and Crowley (2022) have developed quantitative measures of Cramer (2016)’s ru-
ral resentment construct. Through factor and correlational analyses, Munis (2020) shows
that his survey items which measure economic, cultural, and representational resentment
produce a reliable measure of the latent phenomenon of place resentment. Munis also
shows that this place resentment measure captures a sentiment distinct from other atti-
tudes that are similarly geographically distributed, including populist attitudes and racial
resentment.4 Similarly, Trujillo and Crowley (2022) uses a large battery of questions to
measure the (related, but arguably broader) concept of rural consciousness, focusing on
the role of distinct subcomponents of rural consciousness – economic, cultural, and rep-
resentational – for conservative ideology and Donald Trump support.5 Finally, McKay,
Jennings, and Stoker (2021) show that perceptions of social and economic marginality
vary across place types and predict lower trust in government.
A related development in research on place resentment has been to extend the concept
to voters in places beyond rural and peripheral communities. As we noted earlier, Munis
(2020) examines place resentment among rural, suburban, and urban voters separately.
de Lange, Brug, and Harteveld (2022) examines resentment among voters at different
levels of urbanity (using a five-point scale of most urban to most rural), and peripherality
(based on distance to the Dutch parliament); both studies broadly conclude that people in
more urban and more central places do harbour place resentments, but that resentment is
4
In the American context, however, racial resentment is clearly related to place resentment. See
Nelsen and Petsko (2021).
5
The difference between place resentment as measured in Munis (2020) (and here) and rural conscious-
ness as measured in Trujillo and Crowley (2022) is substantial, most notably in the fact that Trujillo
and Crowley measure rural consciousness among all residents regardless of their location. Trujillo and
Crowley find that rural consciousness varies little by place of residence; in fact, in one study, non-rural
residents have stronger rural consciousness than rural residents. In our work, as we explain below, we first
measure individuals’ in-place and out-place perceptions, and then measure place resentment conditional
on those perceptions.

6
highest in rural and peripheral places. At the same time, these studies make quite different
assumptions about the direction of this resentment – that is, the target of individuals’
feelings of resentment and unfairness: de Lange, Brug, and Harteveld (2022)’s measure
assesses people’s resentment toward both the government and politicians in the Hague and
“people in the rest of the Netherlands” (6), whereas Munis (2020)’s measure is designed
to constrain urban residents to being resentful of rural areas, and rural and suburban
voters to being resentful or urban places.
A third recent extension of place resentment research has focused on how place resent-
ment might mediate the relationship between an individual’s place of residence and their
political attitudes. While it is well established that urban and rural voters are divided
on a range of salient policy issues, such as immigration, gender and LGBT rights, and
climate change (e.g. Czaika and Di Lillo 2018; Gimpel et al. 2020; Luca et al. 2021;
Lunz Trujillo 2021), what is less clear is how these issues map on to individuals’ con-
nection to their places of residence (place identity) and their feelings toward other place
types (place resentment). Two recent studies suggest an important connection between
political attitudes and place resentment: Huijsmans (2022) shows that place resentment
is a significant predictor of geographic variation in immigrant and populist attitudes in
the Netherlands, and Diamond (2021) shows that rural resentment is important for un-
derstanding ruralites’ distinct attitudes on the environment. These findings suggest that
urban-rural attitudinal divides may be especially pronounced among individuals with
high levels of place resentment.
Our study contributes to this rapidly growing literature in three ways. First, and
most importantly, we expand the study of place resentment by assessing the strength
and political significance of place resentment across the full set of urban, suburban, and
rural place types as in-groups and out-groups. Unlike most previous research, which
focuses on resentment toward urban places, we conceptualize and measure place resent-
ment across many possible directions: urban voters may see themselves as distinct from,
and resent, suburban or rural voters; suburban voters may resent urban or rural voters;
and rural voters may resent suburban or urban voters. This is not merely an exercise in
completeness; it is theoretically motivated by the observation that conflict over the distri-
bution of resources, accusations of cultural disrespect and misunderstanding, and claims
about place-based political over-representation are a cornerstone of political rhetoric in
many places. Understanding how this resentment varies across place-based in-groups and
out-groups is an important priority for our wider understanding of place and politics.
Second, our study explores how high-resentment individuals in rural, suburban, and
urban places may or may not resemble one another in their demographic and political
characteristics. If place resentment is a phenomenon that goes beyond rural and periph-
eral places, then we need to understand if the people who feel resentful of other places
tend to be similar to one another. Given that there are important economic, demographic,

7
and cultural differences between rural, suburban, and urban places in Canada and other
countries, we might expect that the characteristics of people who feel resentful of other
places will vary across these place types.
Finally, we explore how place resentment is related to two important political phenom-
ena: citizens’ satisfaction with the quality of representation they receive from politicians
and governments at the local, provincial, and federal levels, and citizens’ attitudes on
highly divisive issues in the areas of environmental, immigration, and “traditionalist val-
ues” policy. These analyses allow us to explore how place resentment may serve as an
important mechanism for the place-based political divides that have emerged in many
democracies, and how place-based variation in representational satisfaction and issue
attitudes may be “supercharged” when the variation is especially pronounced among
high-resentment individuals. Here, too, our approach allows us to explore this variation
across urban, rural, and suburban place types.

3 Data and Methods


Our data come from two surveys of the Canadian public. The first is the Municipal
Attitudes and Identities Survey, a pan-Canadian survey administered by Abacus Data
using an online panel with sample quotas for province, language, gender, and age. The
survey was fielded between September 30 and October 12, 2021. After applying survey
weights, quality checks, and removing missing responses, we have a total of 3,026 complete
responses available for analysis from this survey. The Municipal Attitudes and Identities
Survey is among the first to include a measure of place identity, a full place resentment
battery, and a suite of questions about democratic satisfaction and representation within
a single survey.
Our second data source is the Multilevel Democracy Project’s (MLDP) survey of
eligible voters in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, during the 2022 Ontario
provincial election. This survey was administered by L´eger using an online panel, with
sample quotas for age, gender, and region. This survey included an extensive battery of
policy issue preference questions alongside a place resentment battery; we thus rely on the
MLDP dataset in our analysis of place resentment and policy attitudes. Available sample
sizes in the MLDP vary by policy issue question (some were asked in the campaign period
survey, and others in the smaller post-election survey), but we have an overall total of
4,000 responses available in this second dataset.6
Our primary quantity of interest in this paper is place resentment, an individual’s
belief about patterns of cultural, economic, and political unfairness that are associated
with the place where they live. We measure place resentment using a two-stage approach.
6
We provide exact N for each issue question model in the supplementary material.

8
Table 1: Place Resentment: Question Wording

Category Question Wording Response Scale


Culture In Canada, {in-place} areas have Strongly agree, somewhat agree,
a distinctive culture that is often somewhat disagree, strongly
misunderstood by people in disagree, don’t know
{out-place} areas.
Economy In Canada, {in-place} areas have Strongly agree, somewhat agree,
distinct economic interests that somewhat disagree, strongly
are often ignored by people in disagree, don’t know
{out-place} areas.
Politics In Canada, {out-place} areas Strongly agree, somewhat agree,
have too much say in Canadian somewhat disagree, strongly
politics. disagree, don’t know
Politics Politicians care more about Strongly agree, somewhat agree,
representing people in {out-place} somewhat disagree, strongly
areas than in {in-place} areas. disagree, don’t know

In the first stage, we ask respondents which of three words best describes the place they
live: urban, suburban, or rural. We also ask which word least describes the place they
live. These two choices provide us with a place-based in-group and out-group, both
defined in terms of the respondent’s own subjective place perceptions. We refer to these
choices as the respondent’s “in-place” and “out-place.”
In stage two, we piped each respondent’s in-place and out-place into a four-question
place resentment battery, adapted from research in the United States by Munis (2020).
We summarize these questions in table 1. The questions capture respondents’ attitudes
about how their in-place is overlooked, misunderstood, or under-represented when com-
pared to the out-place on cultural, economic, and political dimensions. Following Cramer
(2016) and Munis (2020), we treat the four items as measuring distinct components of a
single latent construct, place resentment, and empirical tests of the reliability and dimen-
sionality of the four-item battery indicate that it is appropriate to combine the four items
into a single unidimensional scale.7 Following past work in the place identity literature
(Borwein and Lucas 2021), we measure this latent quantity using Bayesian factor analysis,
which allows us to maximize available data and measure each respondent’s place resent-
ment score with uncertainty, allowing for more robust findings in subsequent analysis.8
7
Cronbach’s α = 0.78. Scree plots from a standard factor analysis show a distinct “elbow” at two
dimensions, with eigenvalues above one only for the first dimension. Basic Space Scaling of the four
items (Armstrong, Lucas, and Taylor 2022; Poole 1998) show that the first dimension explains 60% of
the variance in the items. Trujillo and Crowley (2022) argue that researchers should measure the separate
effects of each aspect of place resentment, but their findings on the distinct effects of the sub-dimensions
are inconclusive. Thus for both theoretical and empirical reasons, we believe it is most appropriate to
measure place resentment as a general phenomenon that incorporates economic, cultural, and political
elements.
8
In the supplementary material, we show that our findings in the main text are robust when we

9
Table 2: Correlates of Place Resentment: Variables

Category Characteristic Description / Measurement


Socio-Demographics Gender Dichotomized from self-reported gender
identity (0=man, 1=woman)
Socio-Demographics Age Calculated from self-reported year of
birth
Socio-Demographics Education Dichotomized from self-reported
educational attainment (0 = no
university degree, 1 = university degree)
Socio-Demographics Income Self-reported income category
Socio-Demographics Race Dichotomized from self-reported racial
background (0 = nonwhite, 1 = white)
Socio-Demographics Region British Columbia, Prairie, Ontario,
Quebec, Atlantic Canada
Politics Ideology Ideological self-placement on 0-10 scale
(0 = left, 10 = right)
Place Place Identity Four-item place-based social identity
battery (from Borwein and Lucas 2021)

In the online appendix, we provide more detail on the Bayesian factor analysis model, but
also show that our findings are substantively identical when we measure place resentment
by simply summing the four items into an additive scale. For ease of interpretation, we
rescale the place resentment variable to range between a minimum value of zero and a
maximum value of one.
Our second research question concerns the correlates of place resentment in urban,
suburban, and rural places – and the similarities or differences in those correlates in each
place type. We include eight variables in our analysis of the correlates of place resentment,
all of which are summarized in table 2. We include five socio-demographic characteristics
that have been found to be associated with place identity and place resentment in past re-
search (Borwein and Lucas 2021; Munis 2020; Wong 2010; for a dicussion of the correlates
of place identity and attachment, see also Lewicka 2011), along with each respondent’s
region of residence, to account for possible baseline differences in place resentment across
Canadian regions (Jacques, Béland, and Lecours 2022).9 We also include respondents’
ideological self-placement on a 0-10 left-right scale. Finally, our analysis includes each
respondent’s place-based identity as an urban, suburban, or rural person, measured in
the same way, and using the same questions, as the four-item place-based social iden-
tity measure in Borwein and Lucas (2021). This final variable measures respondents’
propagate this measurement uncertainty through all of the subsequent analyses.
9
Readers should note that our gender question included an open-ended response option for non-binary
respondents. We exclude these responses from our analysis due to very low sample size in the non-binary
response option category.

10
Table 3: Political Implications of Place Resentment: Survey Questions

Question Question Wording


Democracy and Representation (Canadian Survey)
Democracy On the whole, how satisfied are you with the way democracy works in Canada?
Representation 1 In your opinion, how well does each of the following elected officials currently
represent your interests and preferences? (municipal councillor or councillors,
municipal mayor, provincial MLA/MPP/MNA, federal MP)
Representation 2 In your opinion, how well does each of the following governments currently
represent your interests and preferences? (your municipal government, your
provincial government, the federal government)
Issue Attitudes (Ontario Survey)
Environment To help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Ontario government should
continue with the carbon tax.
Environment Environmental regulation should be stricter, even if it leads to consumers
having to pay higher prices.
Environment The Ontario government should do more to help Canada’s energy sector,
including building oil pipelines.
Environment How much should the Ontario government spend on the environment?
Environment When there is a conflict between protecting the environment and creating jobs,
jobs should come first.
Traditionalism We have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this country
Traditionalism New lifestyles are contributing to the breakdown of our society
Traditionalism This country would have many fewer problems if there was more emphasis on
traditional family values.
Immigration Too many recent immigrants just don’t want to fit in to Canadian society.
Immigration Immigrants increase crime rates in Ontario
Immigration Ontario’s culture is generally harmed by immigrants.
Immigration Do you think Canada should admit. . . more immigrants, fewer immigrants, or
about the same number of immigrants as now?

connection to urban, suburban, or rural places as a meaningful social identity.


Our final research question focuses on the political implications of place resentment
in rural, suburban, and urban places – with a particular focus, once again, on possible
differences in these relationships across different place types. As we discussed above,
we focus on two aspects of place resentment and politics: citizens’ satisfaction with their
representatives across levels of government, and citizens’ attitudes on policy issues related
to highly-charged “progressive” policy debates. We summarize these questions in table 3.
In the first set of questions, which were included in the Municipal Attitudes and Identities
Survey, we not only measure general satisfaction with democracy, but also respondents’
more specific perceptions about whether their representatives and governments represent
their interests and preferences. In the second set of questions, which we draw from the
MLDP survey, we explore place resentment as it relates to attitudes on environmental,
moral traditionalism, and immigration policy attitudes. To avoid selection bias, this issue
analysis includes the full suite of questions on the subjects of immigration, traditionalism,
and the environment included in the MLDP survey.
Because we report results from a number of analyses, we provide additional detail on
model specifications and robustness tests as we proceed through our results. However,

11
Table 4: Place Resentment: Overall Levels

In-Place Out-Place Resentment N


(0-1)
Rural Suburban 0.72 81
Rural Urban 0.74 423
Suburban Rural 0.46 844
Suburban Urban 0.63 355
Urban Rural 0.48 1172
Urban Suburban 0.63 151

unless otherwise indicated, all models use OLS, and all variables are rescaled to range
between zero and one to maximize comparability of coefficients. We provide plots of the
coefficients of interest in the main text along with full model tables in the supplementary
material.

4 Results
We begin with table 4, which summarizes overall levels of place resentment for each
possible in-place and out-place among survey respondents. Recall that the “in-place” in
the table is the word that the respondent feels best describes the place they live, and the
“out-place” represents the word that least describes the place they live. Two important
findings are clear in the table. First, notice that patterns of out-place perception are
quite imbalanced among those who choose “rural” or “urban” as their in-place: 84%
of rural respondents (423 of 504) choose “urban” as their out-place, and 89% of urban
respondents (1172 of 1323) choose “rural” as their out-place. Very few urban and rural
residents choose “suburban” as their out-place. Suburban residents, in contrast, are more
divided in their responses: 70% choose rural as their out-place, and 30% choose urban. In
suburban places, in other words, patterns of out-place perception are much more variable
than in urban or rural places.
The second important finding in table 4 concerns the place resentment scores them-
selves. In the first two rows, we can see that rural residents have the highest resentment
scores regardless of the out-place they select: 0.72 and 0.74 for suburban and urban
out-places, respectively. This finding aligns with Munis (2020) and de Lange, Brug, and
Harteveld (2022)’s findings that place resentment is higher in rural and peripheral ar-
eas, and confirms that especially high rural resentment is not a distinctively American
phenomenon. Strikingly, however, these resentment levels are not reciprocated by sub-
urban or urban residents: the two lowest scores in the table, and the only scores below
0.5 on the 0-1 scale, are among suburban and urban residents who choose rural as their
out-place. In fact, resentment scores are markedly higher when suburban and urban res-

12
Overall Rural Suburban Urban

Age

Woman

University Education

White

Income

Ideology

Place Identity

-0.2-0.10.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 -0.2-0.10.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 -0.2-0.10.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 -0.2-0.10.0 0.1 0.2 0.3

p<0.05 p<0.1 p>0.1

Figure 1: Correlates of Place Resentment

idents choose each other as their out place (0.63 in both cases) than when either group
selects “rural.” Overall, urban and suburban residents appear to resent each other more
than either group resents rural places, while rural residents resent urban and suburban
out-places equally – and equally strongly.10
The results in table 4 offer preliminary support for the argument that place resentment
looks quite different as we move across place types. In figure 1, we explore this possibility
in more detail, summarizing models of the correlates of place resentment in the full sample
(the first column) and among rural, suburban, and urban respondents. Each column is a
distinct OLS specification; coefficients to the right of the vertical line indicate that higher
values of the variable are associated with stronger place resentment. Black coefficients are
statistically significant at the 95% level, dark gray coefficients are statistically significant
at the 90% level, and light gray coefficients are not statistically significant.
In the first column of the figure, a number of coefficients – including age, gender, race,
income, ideology, and place identity – are significantly associated with place resentment.
However, a cursory glance across the remaining columns in the figure makes it clear that
the pooled model is misleading; in many cases, the correlates of place resentment in
rural, suburban, and urban areas point in very different directions. Among rural resi-
10
All of the differences reported in this paragraph are statistically significant at p<0.01. There is no
difference in average place resentment among rural residents who select suburban vs. urban out-places
(p=0.45).

13
dents (the second column), place resentment tends to be higher among older individuals,
ideological conservatives, and those with strong place identities. For suburban residents
(the third column), the relationships are quite different: while ideological conservatives
and strong place identifiers remain positively associated with place resentment, the re-
maining relationships in the model contrast sharply with the rural residents. Age is no
longer statistically significant, and we now see statistically significant relationships for
gender (lower resentment among women than men), education (higher resentment among
those with university degrees), and race (higher resentment among non-white respon-
dents). In short, the profile of a high-resentment rural resident is different from that of a
high-resentment suburbanite.
This contrast is all the more obvious when we turn to urban residents in the final
column of figure 1. On four variables, the estimated relationships for urban and suburban
residents are very similar: lower resentment among women, higher resentment among
those with university degrees, lower resentment among whites, and higher resentment
among strong place identifiers. But the other variables in the model suggest that high-
resentment urban and suburban residents are quite different: in urban areas, they are
more likely to be younger in age and have higher incomes, and – unlike both rural and
suburban places – urban place resentment has no significant relationship with political
ideology.
Taken together, the results in figure 1 suggest that high-resentment individuals in ru-
ral, suburban, and urban places look very different from each other – more like opposites
than socio-demographic siblings. In fact, high-resentment individuals seem to resemble
the caricature of what each group may resent about the others: older and more conser-
vative residents in rural and suburban Canada whose resentment of urban places is most
strongly reciprocated by young, well-educated, relatively wealthy, non-white urbanites.
Across all of the variables in figure 1, the patterns of relationships are consistent for
just one variable: those who identify strongly with the type of place where they live are
much more likely to express strong place resentment. This single consistent relation-
ship reinforces the connection between place identity and place resentment; identifying
strongly with the kind of place where one lives (urban, suburban, or rural) as a meaningful
social identity is strongly connected to place resentment across all place types.

4.1 Democratic Satisfaction and Issue Attitudes


Thus far we have found considerable differences in the degree and correlates of place
resentment across place types. These asymmetries are equally clear when we turn our
attention to citizens’ democratic satisfaction and policy issue attitudes. In figure 2, we
summarize the relationship between place resentment and eight aspects of citizen satisfac-
tion: their overall satisfaction with democracy, their satisfaction with the representation

14
Satisfaction with Democracy Representation: Councillor
Urban
Suburban
Rural

Representation: Mayor Representation: Provincial MLA


Urban
Suburban
Rural

Representation: Federal MP Representation: Municipal Government


Urban
Suburban
Rural

Representation: Provincial Government Representation: Federal Government


Urban
Suburban
Rural
-0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2

p<0.05 p<0.1 p>0.1

Figure 2: Place Resentment and Democratic Satisfaction

they receive from their local representatives across levels of government (municipal coun-
cillor and mayor, provincial representative, and federal representative), and their satisfac-
tion with representation provided by their municipal, provincial, and federal governments
more generally. Each coefficient in the figure is drawn from a distinct OLS model, which
also includes controls for age, gender, university education, ideological self-placement, and
province of residence. Each coefficient therefore provides an estimate of the difference
in democratic satisfaction we would expect when comparing low-resentment and high-
resentment individuals who are otherwise similar in their socio-demographic, ideological,
and geographic characteristics. As in the previous figure, we use black, dark gray, and
light gray to distinguish between 95% significance, 90% significance, and no statistical
significance, respectively.
The results in figure 2 reveal a striking asymmetry in the consequences of place re-
sentment for democratic satisfaction. In general, urban and suburban residents with
high place resentment are more satisfied than low-resentment residents; this is partic-
ularly true among urban residents, for whom the relationship is statistically significant
in seven of the eight categories. In rural places, however, high place resentment tends
to be associated with lower levels of democratic satisfaction, particularly when it comes
to overall satisfaction with democracy and a feeling of being well represented by the
provincial or federal governments. The contrast among place types is especially stark,

15
and almost always statistically significant, when we compare rural and urban residents.11
When it comes to the relationship between democratic satisfaction and place resent-
ment, the results in figure 2 suggest that suburban and urban residents tend to look
more similar to one another than to rural residents. When we turn to policy issues,
however, suburban residents tend to look more like their rural counterparts. Figure 3
presents these relationships. Once again, each coefficient is drawn from a distinct model,
and all models also include controls for age, gender, education level, and ideological self-
placement (because this analysis is drawn from the Multilevel Democracy Project study
in the province of Ontario, we drop the control for province in this analysis). Coeffi-
cients are shaded for statistical significance using the same colour scheme as the earlier
plots. When coefficients are to the right of the dotted vertical line in the figure, this indi-
cates that higher resentment is associated with more agreement on the issue; coefficients
to the left of the dotted line indicate that higher resentment is associated with lower
agreement on the issue. Variables are recoded such that positive values in the “environ-
ment” category indicate support for interventionist environmental policy, positive values
in the “immigration” category indicate anti-immigrant attitudes, and positive values in
the “traditionalism” category indicate more traditionalist preferences.
Figure 3 suggests the relationship between place resentment and issue attitudes among
urban residents is essentially the opposite of the relationship for suburban or rural resi-
dents. Among urban residents, higher resentment is associated with increased support for
environmental policy, more pro-immigration attitudes, and less traditionalist positions on
family values and equal rights – that is, more progressive policy attitudes. The opposite
relationships hold for suburban and rural residents, where high resentment is associated
with reduced support for environmental policies, more skeptical positions on immigration,
and more traditionalist family values. In other words, while past studies have shown that
urban, suburban, and rural residents tend to differ in their policy preferences on progres-
sive policy issues, our findings suggest that these differences are especially pronounced
among high-resentment residents – particularly when we compare urban residents to their
suburban or rural counterparts.

5 Discussion and Conclusion


How widespread is place-based resentment, and how does it affect political preferences and
attitudes across rural, suburban, and urban places? This study answers these questions
11
Z-tests indicate that the urban and rural coefficients are significantly different from each other for
all variables except “Provincial MLA”. Suburban and rural coefficients are significantly different for
all variables except “Provincial MLA” and “Provincial Government.” Suburban and urban coefficients
are significantly different from one another in just two cases: “Municipal Government” and “Federal”
government. In all cases of statistically significant differences, rural coefficients are lower than suburban
and urban coefficients, and suburban coefficients are lower than urban coefficients.

16
Urban Suburban Rural

Stricter Environmental Regulation

Environment
Spend on Environment
Jobs Over Environment
Help Energy Sector
Continue Carbon Tax

Immigrants Harm Culture

Immigration
Immigrants Don't Fit In
Immigrants Commit Crime
Decrease Immigration

Traditionalism
New Lifestyles Harm Community
Need Family Values
Equal Rights Gone Too Far

-1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2

p<0.05 p<0.1 p>0.1

Figure 3: Place Resentment and Issue Attitudes

and contributes to a rapidly growing literature on place resentment by means of a novel


survey design that allows us to examine both the source and the target of individuals’
place resentments across place types. As in past studies in the United States, we show
that rural residents in Canada report the highest levels of place resentment, and that this
resentment is most often directed toward urban areas but is also high when directed at the
suburbs. Extending these past studies, we further show that many urban and suburban
residents also harbour substantial place resentment, especially when that resentment is
directed at one another rather than rural places – with the caveat that a majority of
urban and suburban residents identify rural places as their relevant out-group, and when
they do, their levels of place resentment tend to be lower.
One important contribution that our findings make to the literature on place resent-
ment is to show that urban and rural resentment are, in many ways, mirrors of each other,
with suburban resentment being somewhat more variable. This is true of the types of
people who tend to be more resentful: high-resentment rural residents tend to be older
in age and ideologically conservative, whereas urban resenters tend to be younger, richer,
more educated, and male. It is also true in terms of issue attitudes, with high-resentment
urbanites expressing more progressive attitudes and high-resentment ruralites expressing
more conservative attitudes. Here our findings suggest that place resentment is connected
to the two sides of the “culture war” cleavage, with high-resentment rural and suburban

17
voters holding conservative views on the environment, immigration, and traditionalism,
and high-resentment urban voters holding more progressive views on the same issues.
While our study is not designed to assess causality, the alignment of these views with
place resentment may entrench the divisiveness of these issues, converting what would
otherwise be an attitudinal-based cleavage into a more deeply held identity-based divide.
This “mirror image” phenomenon also turns up when we examine place resentment
and democratic satisfaction. While rural residents with higher place resentment tend to be
less satisfied with their representation and with democracy, urban and suburban residents
with higher place resentment tend to be more satisfied with both. This is a surprising
finding. Research on affective polarization (that is, sympathy toward partisan in-groups
and dislike of partisan out-groups) has found that political intergroup hostility decreases
satisfaction with democracy (Wagner 2021), and we expected that place-based intergroup
resentment might similarly diminish satisfaction with representation and democracy be-
cause of feelings that the place-based out-group is unfairly advantaged. One possibility
is that place resentment is more distinctly political for rural resenters, and thus more
explicitly connected to the perceived quality of political institutions and representatives,
whereas urban and suburban resentment is more social, related to perceived differences
in cultural norms and lifestyles. Another possibility is that, in a context in which well-
educated urban and suburban residents are increasingly favoured by global economic
changes, high-resentment urbanites and suburbanites recognize that the political system
is “working well” for themselves, while also feeling that rural places still misunderstand
them and receive more attention than they deserve. Disentangling these possibilities
will require surveys in which place identity and resentment questions are combined with
questions for all respondents about the cultural, economic, and political needs of rural,
suburban, and urban places.
To date, research on place resentment has focused heavily on rural and peripheral
areas, with occasional acknowledgement of urban places as well. With the exception of
Munis’s (2020) study of the correlates of suburban resentment toward urban places, the
suburbs have been almost completely overlooked. Our study examined the correlates
and consequences of suburban resentment, and in doing so, illustrates the importance
of studying suburban place resentment as a separate phenomenon. We consistently find
that suburban resenters are a distinct group, who intriguingly resemble both rural and
urban resenters, depending on the outcome of interest. Like urban resenters, suburban
resenters are more likely to be non-white, well educated, and men, and high-resentment
suburbanites also resemble urban resenters in reporting higher levels of democratic sat-
isfaction. However, suburban resenters look much more like their rural counterparts on
questions of the environment, immigration, and traditional lifestyles. Understanding how
and why suburban resenters resemble their urban counterparts demographically, but their
rural counterparts attitudinally, is an important priority for future research.

18
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7 Supplementary Material
7.1 Measurement: Additional Detail and Robustness Tests
As we noted in the main text, we employ the following Bayesian factor analysis model to
measure place resentment in our analysis:

yik = βkξi + ik

In this model, i refer’s to each individual’s response on each of the k items in the place
resentment measure, and ξ is a latent measure of each individual’s place resentment.
Item-specific intercepts are unnecessary in this model because we rescale all variables
to mean = 0 and sd = 1. To identify the model, we constrain all β parameters to be
positive. We implement this model in R using JAGS; R̂ values and effective sample sizes
indicate strong evidence of convergence.
While the Bayesian factor analysis has important advantages over an additive scale or
traditional factor analysis (including avoiding listwise deletion, incorporating information
about discrimination parameters into measurement, and allowing for robustness tests with
measurement uncertainty), we emphasize that our measure is essentially identical to an
additive scale (r=0.997) and factor scores from a traditional factor analysis (r=0.999).

7.2 Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty


One advantage of Bayesian measurement models is the ability to propagate uncertainty
in the measured quantity (in our case, place resentment) through subsequent analysis. In
the figure below, we do so for the results of the two analyses in which we employ place
resentment as an independent variable: the representation analysis (figure 2 in the main
text) and the policy issues analysis (figure 3 in the main text). For the representation
analysis, we present our results in figure 4 as structured comparisons between urban-
rural, urban-suburban, and rural-urban place resenters; in each case the results report
the difference between the coefficients, with 95% credible intervals. Notice that the
urban and suburban coefficients are reliably higher than rural coefficients for all but
provincial MLAs. In contrast, there is no meaningful difference in the urban and suburban
coefficients.
Figure 5 summarizes the results of figure 3 in the main text when incorporating mea-
surement uncertainty. General patterns as described in the main text are substantively
identical.

22
Difference: Suburban vs. Rural Difference: Urban vs. Rural Difference: Urban vs. Suburban

Fed. Gov.

Mun. Gov.

Mun. Mayor

Mun. Councillor

Fed. MP

Prov. Gov.

Democratic Satisfaction

Prov. MLA

0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75

Figure 4: Robustness Test: Democratic Satisfaction Analysis

Rural Suburban Urban

Stricter Environmental Regulation

Environment
Spend on Environment
Jobs Over Environment
Help Energy Sector
Continue Carbon Tax

Immigrants Harm Culture


Immigration

Immigrants Don't Fit In


Immigrants Commit Crime
Decrease Immigration
Traditionalism

New Lifestyles Harm Community


Need Family Values
Equal Rights Gone Too Far

-1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2

p>0.1 p<0.1 p<0.05

Figure 5: Robustness Test: Issues Analysis

23
7.3 Correlates of Place Resentment: Full Table
Table 5 provides full results for the correlates of place resentment reported in figure 1 in
the main text.

Table 5: Correlates of Place Resentment

All Rural Suburban Urban


(1) (2) (3) (4)
University Education 0.01 0.01 0.04∗∗∗ 0.04∗∗∗
(0.01) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01)
Ideology 0.09∗∗∗ 0.12∗∗∗ 0.12∗∗∗ 0.04
(0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.03)
Age −0.05∗∗ 0.07∗ −0.03 −0.19∗∗∗
(0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.03)
Woman −0.02∗∗ −0.02 −0.03∗ −0.03∗∗
(0.01) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01)
Region: BC −0.07∗∗∗ 0.06 −0.06∗ −0.02
(0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.03)
Region: Ontario −0.06∗∗∗ 0.02 −0.04 −0.01
(0.02) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03)
Region: Prairie −0.07∗∗∗ 0.04 −0.05 −0.03
(0.02) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03)
Region: Quebec −0.05∗∗∗ −0.05∗ −0.03 0.01
(0.02) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03)
Income 0.03∗ 0.01 0.04 0.08∗∗∗
(0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.03)
Place Identity 0.21∗∗∗ 0.22∗∗∗ 0.16∗∗∗ 0.12∗∗∗
(0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.03)
White −0.02∗ 0.002 −0.03∗ −0.04∗∗
(0.01) (0.03) (0.02) (0.02)
Constant 0.46∗∗∗ 0.49∗∗∗ 0.42∗∗∗ 0.50∗∗∗
(0.03) (0.05) (0.04) (0.04)
Observations 2,495 410 993 1,092
Adjusted R2 0.07 0.11 0.06 0.11
∗ ∗∗ ∗∗∗
Note: p<0.1; p<0.05; p<0.01

24
7.4 Place Resentment and Democratic Satisfaction: Full
Tables

Table 6: Full Table: Representation Satisfaction (Urban)

Dependent variable:
Council Mayor MLA MP Fed Mun Prov
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
Place Resentment 0.19 0.18 0.09 0.12 0.26 0.20 0.06
(0.04) (0.05) (0.04) (0.05) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04)

Ideology 0.05 −0.02 0.17∗ 0.06 −0.09∗ 0.04 0.31∗


(0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04)

Age −0.003 −0.01 −0.08 −0.04 −0.11∗ −0.01 −0.08∗


(0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04)

Woman 0.01 0.005 −0.01 −0.01 −0.01 0.04∗ −0.002


(0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02)

University Ed. 0.10∗ 0.09∗ 0.04 0.08∗ 0.08∗ 0.10∗ 0.04


(0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02)

Province FEs Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes


Observations 1,026 1,064 1,028 1,050 1,109 1,083 1,109
Adjusted R2 0.08 0.06 0.09 0.06 0.14 0.09 0.16
Note: * p less than 0.05

25
Table 7: Full Table: Representation Satisfaction (Suburban)

Dependent variable:
Council Mayor MLA MP Fed Mun Prov
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
Place Resentment 0.10 0.12 0.04 0.06 0.12 0.10 0.02
(0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.05) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04)

Ideology 0.04 −0.09∗ 0.15∗ −0.02 −0.31∗ −0.08∗ 0.18∗


(0.04) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.04) (0.05)

Age 0.01 −0.001 −0.03 0.0001 −0.01 0.03 0.02


(0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04)

Woman 0.03 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.03 0.01 −0.001


(0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02)

University Ed. 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.04∗ 0.06∗ 0.04∗ 0.01


(0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02)

Province FEs Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes


Observations 930 966 952 969 1,011 974 1,008
Adjusted R2 0.01 0.01 0.04 0.03 0.07 0.01 0.08
Note: * p less than 0.05

26
Table 8: Full Table: Representation Satisfaction (Rural)

Dependent variable:
Council Mayor MLA MP Fed Mun Prov
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Place Resentment −0.10 −0.17 0.003 −0.17 −0.24 −0.13 −0.16∗
(0.08) (0.09) (0.08) (0.09) (0.08) (0.08) (0.08)

Ideology 0.12 0.08 0.27∗ 0.24∗ −0.21∗ 0.10 0.33∗


(0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.08) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07)

Age 0.10 0.03 0.05 0.03 −0.09 0.04 0.04


(0.06) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.06) (0.06)

Woman −0.01 −0.01 0.02 −0.04 0.004 −0.004 0.03


(0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.04) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03)

University Ed. 0.03 0.03 −0.04 0.0003 0.06 0.03 0.02


(0.03) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.03) (0.03)

Province FEs Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes


Observations 372 373 387 387 404 385 404
Adjusted R2 0.02 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.12 0.03 0.10
Note: * p less than 0.05

27
7.5 Place Resentment and Issue Position: Full Tables

Table 9: Full Table: Issues (Urban)


Dependent variable:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
Resentment 0.85∗ 0.34 0.75∗ 0.41∗ 0.09 −0.51∗ 0.24 0.18 −0.04 0.23 −0.20 −0.08
(0.18) (0.17) (0.11) (0.11) (0.11) (0.19) (0.13) (0.12) (0.12) (0.12) (0.19) (0.18)

Ideology −0.13∗ −0.20∗ −0.13∗ −0.16∗ −0.19∗ 0.10∗ 0.16∗ 0.17∗ 0.18∗ 0.20∗ 0.18∗ 0.20∗
(0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02)

Age −0.01∗ −0.004 0.002 −0.0003 0.0000 −0.005∗ −0.003∗ −0.01∗ −0.001 −0.0004 0.005∗ 0.01∗
(0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002)

Woman −0.07 0.24∗ 0.02 0.18∗ 0.08 0.08 0.01 0.004 −0.10∗ −0.20∗ 0.05 −0.07
(0.07) (0.07) (0.05) (0.04) (0.05) (0.08) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.08) (0.07)

Edu. 0.10∗ 0.04∗ 0.06∗ 0.01 0.04∗ −0.11∗ −0.09∗ −0.10∗ −0.12∗ −0.04∗ −0.08∗ −0.09∗
(0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02)

Observations 664 664 1,726 1,726 1,726 664 1,387 1,387 1,386 1,386 542 542
Adjusted R2 0.18 0.27 0.13 0.17 0.20 0.10 0.17 0.20 0.23 0.22 0.23 0.31

Note: * p less than 0.05

Table 10: Full Table: Issues (Suburban)


Dependent variable:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
Resentment −0.03 −0.49∗ −0.12 −0.36∗ −0.43∗ −0.01 0.48∗ 0.28∗ 0.50∗ 0.59∗ 0.60∗ 0.54∗
(0.17) (0.16) (0.11) (0.11) (0.11) (0.18) (0.12) (0.12) (0.12) (0.12) (0.18) (0.18)

Ideology −0.17∗ −0.14∗ −0.14∗ −0.16∗ −0.14∗ 0.14∗ 0.14∗ 0.15∗ 0.14∗ 0.17∗ 0.17∗ 0.19∗
(0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02)

Age −0.001 −0.01∗ 0.0002 −0.0005 −0.004∗ −0.01∗ −0.005∗ −0.01∗ 0.001 0.003 0.01∗ 0.01∗
(0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002)

Woman 0.07 0.19∗ 0.06 0.18∗ 0.05 0.15 −0.13∗ −0.06 −0.04 −0.25∗ 0.06 −0.04
(0.08) (0.07) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.08) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.08) (0.08)

Edu. 0.03 0.02 0.05∗ 0.01 0.03∗ −0.04 −0.06∗ −0.06∗ −0.05∗ −0.02 −0.07∗ −0.08∗
(0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02)

Observations 617 617 1,640 1,640 1,639 618 1,286 1,286 1,285 1,285 487 487
Adjusted R2 0.15 0.23 0.11 0.14 0.13 0.09 0.13 0.12 0.13 0.20 0.23 0.28

Note: * p less than 0.05

Table 11: Full Table: Issues (Rural)


Dependent variable:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
Resentment −0.25 −0.58 −0.46∗ −0.57∗ −0.52∗ 0.35 0.43 0.40 0.83∗ 0.63∗ 1.05∗ 0.68
(0.35) (0.37) (0.22) (0.21) (0.21) (0.33) (0.22) (0.23) (0.23) (0.23) (0.41) (0.40)

Ideology −0.19∗ −0.16∗ −0.14∗ −0.17∗ −0.14∗ 0.12∗ 0.14∗ 0.14∗ 0.16∗ 0.18∗ 0.15∗ 0.16∗
(0.03) (0.03) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.04) (0.04)

Age −0.002 −0.01 0.01∗ 0.005 −0.004 −0.003 −0.003 −0.01∗ 0.003 0.0002 0.01 0.01
(0.004) (0.005) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.004) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.01) (0.01)

Woman −0.13 0.20 0.18∗ 0.04 0.03 0.32∗ −0.06 −0.04 0.03 −0.25∗ 0.14 −0.11
(0.15) (0.15) (0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.14) (0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.17) (0.17)

Edu. 0.12∗ 0.04 0.09∗ 0.02 0.03 −0.18∗ −0.18∗ −0.16∗ −0.13∗ −0.06∗ −0.08 −0.11∗
(0.04) (0.04) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.05) (0.04)

Observations 181 181 546 546 546 181 444 444 444 443 144 144
Adjusted R2 0.24 0.18 0.16 0.18 0.14 0.22 0.24 0.22 0.26 0.24 0.21 0.23

Note: * p less than 0.05

Columns correspond to the following variables: Continue Carbon Tax, Help Energy
Sector, Stricter Environmental Regulation, Spend on Environment, Jobs Over Environ-
ment, Decrease Immigration, Immigrants Commit Crime, Immigrants Harm Culture,

28
Immigrants Don’t Fit In, Equal Rights Gone Too Far, New Lifestyles Harm Community,
Need Family Values

29

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