Urban/Rural Differences and the Culture War in the United States and Canada

Abstract

<p>Recent national elections in the United States and Canada reveal an urban/rural cleavage in vote choice. This cleavage has been overshadowed by the red state/blue state analysis in the United States and dismissed as an artifact of demographic and regional differences in Canada; however, this voting gap appears to have emerged with the increasing salience of "culture war" issues in North American politics. Sociological theory suggests that there may be an affinity between urban and rural place of residence and the progressivist and traditionalist poles of the culture war which may explain urban/rural differences in vote choice. In the present study, urban/rural voting differences are assessed using election surveys from the Canadian Federal and United States Presidential Elections of 2004 and using aggregate data from Canadian Federal and United States Presidential Elections since 1920. The results show that the urban/rural gap has grown to its widest point in recent elections in both countries, coinciding with the reorganization of the right wing of Canadian party politics and the domination of the Republican Party by social conservatives in the United States. After controlling for demographic and social characteristics, rural residents are found to be on average more socially and morally traditional than urban residents. Individual attitudes on gay marriage, abortion and gun control contributed to the urban/rural voting differences observed in both countries. It is concluded that the high profile of moral and social issues associated with the culture war has led to the manifestation of urban/rural cultural differences as a political cleavage in recent Canadian and American national elections.</p>