The Urban-Rural Divide Is Making U.S. Policy Less Predictable

Jonathan Rodden describes the current partisan divide as a geographic realignment. Democratic votes are concentrated in a few large, diverse, increasingly affluent metropolitan counties that have benefited from the global economy. Republican support is more dispersed: across exurban areas outside large inland cities, smaller metropolitan areas and rural communities that, Rodden says, have experienced economic decline and steady population loss.

The divide has a longer history than its current form. Rodden traces that form to the New Deal, when Democrats took up the interests of urban workers in the manufacturing core. The relationship between population density and voting strengthened and spread to the rest of the country after the 1980s, as interest groups persuaded the parties to take positions on issues including civil rights, religion and environmental protection. In Rodden’s account, preferences on each of these issues were correlated with population density.

More recently, free trade, globalization, immigration and national identity have reinforced the alignment. Democrats have taken up the interests of urban groups on these questions, while Republicans have advocated for non-urban groups. Voters who care strongly about the issues began switching parties to match their views, further sharpening the geographic split.

The resulting pattern is not simply a division between city and countryside. Rodden says it has created very safe Democratic urban districts and Republican rural districts, while most Americans live in suburbs and view themselves as moderates. A Pew Research Center chart shown alongside his account compares the share of registered voters identifying with or leaning toward each party in urban, suburban and rural counties from 1998 to 2017. Its headline draws the contrast: urban voters remain solidly Democratic, while rural voters tilt increasingly Republican. The suburban category makes clear that the political map has more than two kinds of places, even as party elites often promote positions that seem extreme to suburban voters.

Rodden says the divide is not only about policy or electoral geography. High-profile urban- and rural-oriented elites from both parties often advocate positions that seem extreme to suburban voters. Each party also invests in portraying the other as dominated by its most extreme urban or rural supporters. In combination, those dynamics encourage misperceptions, mistrust and negative feelings directed at the other side. The resentment can attach to place itself, not just to opposing political views.

Europe offers a contrast in how geographically polarized parties govern. Rodden says green parties have become overwhelmingly urban, while radical-right parties are disproportionately rural. Those parties cannot govern alone; they must form coalitions with mainstream parties that are not as geographically polarized. The governing coalitions that result frequently cross the urban-rural divide.

The American two-party system works differently. Winner-take-all contests for Congress and the presidency, Rodden argues, foster the belief among both urban and rural Americans that their basic values and way of life are at stake in every election cycle. Where coalition governments can require geographically distinct parties to govern together, the US system turns each contest into a direct struggle between two parties, each associated with a different set of places. For Rodden, that makes the divide more than a matter of fear and dislike: it also creates policy uncertainty.

Rodden calls policy uncertainty one of the costs of the urban-rural divide. A title card shown during this part of the argument states, “Urban-rural division drives policy uncertainty.” He connects that uncertainty to the difficulty of making prudent long-term investment decisions when policy might shift between competing agendas.

The contrast is between policy priorities Rodden associates with urban constituencies—trade, immigration, science and renewable energy—and those he associates with rural constituencies—closed borders, protection for traditional manufacturing and a return to fossil fuels. The source also shows the cover of an executive summary titled “The cost of uncertainty on investment.” Rodden’s point is that when national policy may move between these agendas, planning for the long term becomes difficult.

Rodden offers three possible ways to lower the temperature. One is institutional reform that makes urban and rural interests work together. That could mean incentives for partisan compromise and cross-party deal-making, as in the past, or a move toward a multiparty system like those in Europe. The proposals address the same problem through different mechanisms: one encourages cooperation across parties, while the other changes how parties compete and form governing coalitions.

A second option is decentralization. Urban and rural areas could pursue their preferred policies locally, reducing conflict over one-size-fits-all rules at the national or even state level.

The third possibility is for parties to realign around issues less clearly tied to population density. Rodden names economic inequality, AI, data centers and corruption as possible examples. If preferences on such issues do not map as neatly onto urban and rural communities, parties may have more reason to build coalitions across them.

Rodden’s closing argument is that the current alignment is not permanent. American parties have previously found paths to victory that depended on both urban and rural voters. Institutions and political habits can change, and coalitions can realign; he sees no reason that parties cannot again find ways to win support across the geographic divide.